Margaret, however, was a profound distraction. It was “You'll be protesting out of the other side of your mouth about his innocence in another hour” and “I'll show you what truth and honesty are” and other editorial remarks as they waited. What they waited for Ruth didn't know, for all her sister-in-law had said was “They're dealing with it at once,” after her first call to the police.
As at once stretched on, Margaret became more agitated. She was well on her way to talking herself into yet another phone call to demand action from the authorities, when a panda car rolled up in front of the house and she crowed, “They've got him!”
She hurried to the door, and Ruth did her best to follow, getting up stiffly from her chair and finding herself limping along in Margaret's wake. Her sister-in-law charged outside, where one of two uniformed constables was opening the back door of the car. She thrust herself between the policeman and the back seat's occupant. When Ruth finally got there, Margaret had reached inside to grab Paul Fielder by the collar, and she was in the act of pulling him roughly from the car.
“Thought you got away with it, didn't you?” she demanded.
“See here, Madam,” the constable said.
“Let me have that rucksack, you little thief!”
Paul struggled in her grasp and clutched his rucksack to his chest. He kicked at her ankles. She cried, “He's trying to escape,” and to the police, “Do something, damn you. Get that rucksack from him. He's got it in there.”
The second constable came round the side of the car. He said, “You're interfering with—”
“Well, I damn well wouldn't be if either of you would do your jobs!”
“Stand away, Madam,” Constable One said.
Ruth said, “Margaret, you're only frightening him. Paul dear, would you come into the house? Constables, will you help him inside, please?”
Margaret reluctantly released the boy and Paul raced to Ruth. His arms were extended and his meaning was clear. She, and no other, was to have his rucksack.
Ruth ushered the boy and the constables into the house, the rucksack in one hand and her arm through Paul's. She made it a companionable gesture. He was trembling like a shaken duster, and she wanted to say he had nothing to fear. The idea that this boy would have stolen a single thing from Le Reposoir was ludicrous.
She was sorry for the anxiety he was going through, and she knew that her sister-in-law's presence would only serve to aggravate it. She should have done something to keep Margaret from making her phone call to the police, Ruth realised. But short of locking her in the attic or cutting the phone lines, she didn't know what that something was.
Now that the damage was done, though, she could at least prevent Margaret from attending what was no doubt going to be a terrifying interview for the poor boy. So when they got into the stone hall, she said, “Come this way. Paul, constables? If you'll go into the morning room. You'll find it down those two steps just beyond the fireplace.” And when she saw Paul's gaze fix on the rucksack, she patted it and said to him gently, “I'll bring it in a moment. You go with them, dear. You'll be quite safe.”
When the constables had taken Paul to the morning room and closed the door behind them, Ruth turned to her sister-in-law. She said, “I've given you your way in this, Margaret. Now you'll give me mine.”
Margaret was nobody's fool. She recognised the way the wind was blowing her plans to confront the boy who'd stolen money that was meant for her son. She said, “Open that rucksack and see the truth.”
“I'll do that with the police,” Ruth said. “If he's taken something—”
“You'll make excuses for him,” Margaret said bitterly. “Of course you will. You make excuses for everyone. It's a way of life for you, Ruth.”
“We can talk later. If there's more to say.”
“You're not keeping me out of there. You can't.”
“That's true. But the police can. And they will.”
Margaret's back stiffened. Ruth could see that she knew she was defeated in this but was searching for a final comment that would illustrate everything she had suffered and was continuing to suffer at the hands of the contemptible Brouards. Not finding it, however, she turned abruptly. Ruth waited till she heard her sister-in-law's footsteps on the stairs.
When she joined the two constables and Paul Fielder in the morning room, she gave the boy a tender smile. She said, “Sit down, dear,” and to the constables, “Please,” and she indicated two chairs and the sofa. Paul chose the sofa, and she joined him on it. She patted his hand and murmured, “I'm terribly sorry. She gets over-excited, I'm afraid.”
“See here. This boy's been accused of stealing—”
Ruth held up her hand to stop the constable. She said, “I expect that's a figment of my sister-in-law's feverish imagination. If something's missing, I don't know what it is. I'd trust this boy anywhere in my house at any time. With all my possessions.” To prove her point, she returned the rucksack unopened to the boy, saying, “I'm only sorry for the inconvenience to everyone. Margaret's terribly upset by my brother's death. She's not acting rationally just now.”
She thought that would put an end to everything, but she was wrong. Paul pushed the rucksack back at her, and when she said “Why, Paul, I don't quite understand,” he unfastened its clasps and pulled out a cylindrical object: something that rolled into itself.
Ruth looked from it to him, puzzled. Both of the constables got to their feet. Paul pressed the offering into Ruth's hands and when she didn't quite know what to do with it, he did it for her. He unrolled what he had and spread it upon her knees.
She looked at it. She said, “Oh my dear God,” and suddenly understood.
Her vision blurred, and in an instant she forgave her brother everything: the secrets he'd kept and the lies he'd told. The uses to which he'd put other people. The need to be virile. The compulsion to seduce. Once again she was that little girl whose hand had been clutched in her elder brother's. “N'aie pas peur,” he had said. “N'aie jamais peur. On rentrera à la maison.”
One of the constables was speaking, and only dimly was Ruth aware of his voice. She dismissed a thousand memories from her mind and managed to say, “Paul didn't steal this. He was keeping it for me. He meant me to have it all along. I dare say he was holding it till my birthday. Guy would have wanted to keep it safe. He would've known Paul would do that for him. I expect that's what happened.”
More than that, she couldn't say. She found she was overcome by emotion, staggered by the significance of what her brother had done—and the unimaginable trouble he had gone to—to honour her, their family, and its heritage. She murmured to the constables, “We've caused you great trouble. I apologise for that.” It was enough to encourage them to take their leave.
She remained on the sofa with Paul. He eased over next to her. He pointed to the building that the painter had depicted, to the tiny workmen who were labouring on it, to the ethereal woman who sat in the foreground, her eyes lowered to the enormous book in her lap. Her gown spread round her in folds of blue. Her hair swept back as if touched by a breeze. She was every bit as lovely as she'd been when Ruth had last seen her more than sixty years ago: ageless and untouched, frozen in time.
Ruth felt for Paul and took his hand in hers. She was shaking now, and she couldn't speak. But she could act, and that was what she did. She brought his hand to her lips and then got to her feet.
She motioned for him to come with her. She would take him upstairs so that he might see for himself and completely understand the nature of the extraordinary gift he'd just given her.
Valerie found the note upon her return from La Corbière. It was two words long, rendered in Kevin's disciplined hand: Cherie's recital. The fact that he'd written nothing more spoke of his displeasure.
She felt a tiny stab. She'd forgotten about the little girl's Christmas concert at the school. She'd been meant to go along with her husband to applaud the vocal efforts of their six-year-old niece, but in the apprehension of needing to
know how far her responsibility went in the death of Guy Brouard, she'd been unaware of anything else. Kevin might even have reminded her about the concert at breakfast, but she wouldn't have heard him. She was already laying her plans for the day: how and when she could slip down to the Shell House without being missed, what she would say to Henry when she got there.
When Kevin arrived home, she was making chicken stock, skimming fat from the top of a boiling pot. A new recipe for soup lay on the work top next to her. She'd cut it from a magazine in the hope that it might tempt Ruth to eat.
Kevin came in the door and stood watching her, his tie loosened and his waistcoat undone. He was overdressed for a Christmas pageant presented by the under-ten set, Valerie saw, and she felt a secondary stab at the sight of him: He looked good; she should have been with him.
Kevin's glance went to the note he'd left stuck upon the refrigerator. Valerie said, “I'm sorry. I forgot. Cherie did well?”
He nodded. He removed his tie and wrapped it round his hand, setting it on the table next to a bowl of unshelled walnuts. He took off his jacket and then his waistcoat. He pulled out a chair and sat.
“Mary Beth all right?” Valerie asked.
“Well as you'd expect, first Christmas without him.”
“Your first Christmas without him as well.”
“It's different for me.”
“I suppose. Good the girls have you, though.”
A silence came between them. The chicken stock burbled. Tyres crunched on the gravel drive a short distance from the kitchen window. Valerie looked out and saw a police car leaving the grounds of the estate. She frowned at this, returned to the stock pot and added chopped celery. She threw in a handful of salt and waited for her husband to speak.
“Car was gone when I needed it to get into town,” he said. “I had to use Guy's Mercedes.”
“That must've fit you like a picture, all dressed up like you were. Did Mary Beth like the fancy ride?”
“I went on my own. Too late to fetch her. I wasn't on time for the concert as it was. I was waiting for you. Thought for sure you'd just run out somewhere. Picking up medicine at the chemist for the big house or something.”
She made another pass across the top of the stock, removing a nonexistent slick of fat. Ruth wouldn't eat soup with too much fat in it. She'd see the delicate ovals of it, and she'd push the bowl away. So Valerie had to be vigilant. She had to give the chicken stock all her attention.
“Cherie missed you,” Kevin persisted. “You were meant to go.”
“Mary Beth didn't ask where I was, though, did she?”
Kevin didn't answer.
“So . . .” Valerie said as pleasantly as she could. “Those windows of hers sealed up nicely in her house now, Kev? No more leaking?”
“Where were you?”
She went to the fridge and looked inside, trying to think what she could tell him. She pretended a survey of the fridge's contents, but all the time her thoughts swarmed like gnats round overripe fruit.
Kevin's chair scraped on the floor as he got to his feet. He came to the fridge and shut its door. Valerie returned to the cooker and he followed her there. When she picked up the spoon to see to the stock, he took the spoon from her. He set it with care on the utensil holder. “It's time to talk.”
“What about?”
“I think you know.”
She wouldn't admit to that or to anything. She couldn't afford to. So she directed them elsewhere. She did it knowing the terrible risk involved, the risk that put her in the position of repeating her mother's misery: that curse of desertion that seemed to haunt her family. She'd lived her childhood and her girlhood in its shadow and she'd done everything in her power to ensure that she would never have to see the back of a spouse walking away. It had happened to her mother. It had happened to her brother. But she'd sworn it would never happen to her. When we work and strive and sacrifice and love, we are owed devotion in return, she'd believed. She'd had it for years and had it without question. Still, she had to risk losing it in order to give protection where it was now most needed.
She readied herself and said, “You miss our boys, don't you? That's part of what happened. We did a good job with them, but they're gone to their own lives and you miss the fathering. That started it. I saw the longing in you the first time those girls of Mary Beth's were sitting here having their tea.”
She didn't look at her husband and he didn't say anything. In any other situation, she could have interpreted his silence as assent and let the rest of the conversation go. But in this situation she could not do so when letting one conversation go ran the risk of another conversation beginning. There were too few safe subjects to choose from at this point, so she chose this one, telling herself they would have come to it eventually.
She said, “Isn't it true, Kev? Isn't that how everything started?” Despite her deliberate choice of subject, despite the fact that she was making the choice cold-bloodedly as a way to keep that other more terrible knowledge safeguarded forever, she remembered her mother and how it had been for her: the begging and the tears and the do not leave me I will do anything I will be anything I will be her if that's what you ask of me. She promised herself if it came to that, she would not go the way of her mother.
“Valerie.” Kevin's voice sounded hoarse. “What's happened to us?”
“You don't know?”
“Tell me.”
She looked at him. “Is there an us?”
He appeared so perplexed that for an instant she wanted to stop where they were, as far as they'd gone, so close to the border but still not crossing it. But she could not do that. “What're you talking about?” he asked.
“Choices,” she said. “Walking away from them when they're yours to make. Or making them and walking away from others. That's what's happened. I've been watching it happen. I've been looking round it, looking past it, trying not to see it. But it's there all the same, and you're right. It's time we talked.”
“Val, did you tell—”
She stopped him from going in that direction. She said, “Men don't stray unless there's a barrenness, Kev.”
“Stray?”
“Somewhere, a barrenness. In what they already have. First I thought, Well he can act like their dad without becoming their dad, can't he? He can give them what a dad gives his girls and we'll be all right with that, Kev and me. He can stand in Corey's place in their lives. He can do that much. It'll be fine if he does.” She swallowed and wished she didn't have to say it. But she knew that, like her husband, she had no real choice in the matter. “I thought,” she said, “when I thought about it, Kev: He doesn't need to do the same for Corey's wife.”
Kevin said, “Hang on. You've been thinking . . . Mary Beth . . . me?”
He looked appalled. She would have felt relieved had she not needed to press forward to make sure every other thought was obliterated from his mind save the thought that she had suspected him of falling in love with his brother's widow. “Isn't that how it was?” she asked him. “Isn't that how it is? I want the truth here, Kev. I think I'm owed it.”
“Truth's what we all want,” Kevin said. “I'm not sure we're owed it.”
“In a marriage?” she said. “Tell me, Kevin. I want to know what's going on.”
“Nothing,” he said. “I don't see how you came to believe something ever was going on.”
“Her girls. Her phoning. Her needing you to do this and that. You being there for her and missing our boys and wanting . . . I can tell you miss our boys, Kev.”
“Of course I do. I'm their dad. Why wouldn't I miss them? But that doesn't mean . . . Val, I owe Mary Beth what a brother owes to his sister. Nothing more, nothing less. I'd expect you of all people would have understood that. Has that been what this is all about?”
“What?”
“The silence. The secrets. Like you've been hiding something from me. You have, haven't you? Hiding something? You always talk but you've stopped lately. When
I asked . . .” He gestured with his hand and then dropped it to his side. “You wouldn't say. So I thought . . .” He looked away from her, studying the chicken stock as if it were a potion.
“Thought what?” she asked, because in the end she had to know and he had to speak so that she could deny and in denying put the subject at rest between them.
“First,” he said, “I decided you'd told Henry despite the promise to hold your tongue. I thought Jesus God she's told her brother about Cyn and she thinks he's given Brouard the chop and she won't tell me because I warned her off the idea in the first place. But then I decided it was something else, something worse. Worse for me, that is.”
“What?”
“Val, I knew his ways. He had the Abbott woman, but she wasn't for him. He had Cyn, but Cyn's just a girl. He was wanting a woman with a woman's ways and a woman's knowledge, one who'd be as necessary to him as he was to her. And you're that kind of woman, Val. He knew that. I saw that he knew it.”
“So you thought Mr. Brouard and I . . . ?” Valerie could hardly credit it: not only the belief itself that he held—as irrational as it was—but also her luck in his holding it. He looked so miserable that her heart swelled. She wanted to laugh at the lunacy of the idea that Guy Brouard might have wanted her of all people, with her work-roughened hands and her children-borne body, unaltered by the plastic surgeon's knife. You fool, he was after youth and beauty to replace his own, she wanted to tell her husband. But instead she said, “Why on earth would you ever have thought that, love?”
“It's not your nature to be secretive,” he said. “If it wasn't about Henry—”
“Which it wasn't,” she said as she smiled at her husband and allowed the lie to own her in whatever way it would.
“Then what else could it have possibly been?”
“But to think that Mr. Brouard and me . . . How'd you think I'd ever be interested in him?”
“I didn't think. I only saw. He was who he was and you were keeping secrets from me. He was rich and God knows we'll never be and that might've counted for something with you. While you . . . That was the easy part.”
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