Peggy keeled over onto the bed as he closed the door and put a hand to her throbbing temple. It was all going wrong. She hadn’t meant to blurt it out, he just made her so mad – and it was all the fault of that fat prig of a maid.
* * *
After this, it was only natural that he should lean towards Josie – if still only for friendship. It appeared to a depressed Peggy, annoyed and on edge, that every time she encountered her husband he was in the girl’s company.
The more Peggy fumed and raged at him the more he turned to Josie for comfort. One thing that should have pleased her was the discovery that her pregnancy had been a false alarm. It should have, but didn’t; all it meant to her was that all that play-acting had been for nothing. One thing that did gratify her, though, was that her cruel taunts and insinuations continued to hurt him; she could see it in his eyes. She wondered how any man could be so stupid as to still love her when he was fully aware of the reasons for her daily outings. Any other man would have thrown her out, but thankfully not Sonny.
Josie, too, was watchful of the situation and hated what it was doing to Mr John. Though she didn’t want to be accused of breaking up a marriage she did nothing to discourage his casual and numerous trips to the kitchen. Besides, what marriage? It was a sham. Mr. John should never have married that martinet. Apart from which, thought Josie sadly, the young master saw her only as a shoulder to cry on; only his wife put sexual connotations on the relationship. Yet, as things were to turn out, it was Peggy’s jealousy which was to be Josie’s greatest ally.
There came a day in midsummer, when the air was heavy with the threat of an electric storm. There was the rumble of distant thunder and the odd spur of lightning, but as yet the swollen nimbus remained unperforated, as it had done since yesterday, waiting for the right moment to strike. The impending storm had kept Peggy from her rendezvous, which was more, thought Sonny acidly as he watched her restless passage, than her husband was capable of doing. Wordlessly he finished his lunch then went off to his room to lose himself in his painting. Since Mr Lewis’ visit his mother had once more repealed the embargo on his painting; the afternoons were again his own.
Peggy was like a trapped panther, pacing from room to room. First the nursery then, when the children began to grate on her nerves, the drawing room, then back to her own room. Back and forth, back and forth, all afternoon, furiously wafting her fan against the cloying heat. By four o’clock she was almost on the point of screaming with boredom and, on impulse, decided to pay her husband a visit. He got quite tetchy about being interrupted while involved with his painting; an argument would at least ease the monotony.
But when she made her theatrical entrance she was disappointed; he wasn’t there. On the easel was a half-completed study of Thomasin which Sonny intended as a birthday surprise for his mother. He had really excelled himself with this one and had captured his mother completely. To add to the surprise he planned to include this in his coming exhibition. When his proud mother accompanied him on the opening day she would, in the foyer, be confronted by her double. He couldn’t wait to see her face. Nearly everything was ready; framed and catalogued – and priced. Apart from the dozen or so pictures still at the store everything was here, neatly stacked and waiting to be transported to Lewis’ gallery during the coming week.
Peggy strolled about the room, arms folded, fingers itching. She came across a portfolio of sketches and casually picked loose the string that bound them. Perching on Sonny’s bed she sifted through them without much interest, tossing them carelessly to float hither and thither about the room. Suddenly, her mouth dropped open. She tugged out the offending sketch and stared at it. It was of a very pretty girl, done in pastel, Sonny’s first attempt in this medium. But the thing of interest to Peggy was not Sonny’s diversion from the usual oils, but that the girl depicted was completely naked. Her eyes roamed over Dottie’s curves for some time, then her lips clamped together as she screwed and twisted the picture to shreds.
The darts of jealousy began to stab at her again. She left the fragments where they had fallen and charged off to find her husband, having no need to ask where he would be. The kitchen door was ajar. There were two figures at the table, and though they sat on opposite sides the act of leaning on their elbows brought their faces close together. Like his children in times of need, Sonny turned to Josie to share his sorrows and his joys. When his wife had robbed him of his glory, the day he had made the discovery that there was another man, he had instead shared it with the girl. She had expressed great interest in his talent, much more than Peggy had ever done. He found in her a ready ear for his ideas.
‘I do so admire your paintings, Mr John,’ she had said wistfully, that first time. ‘I wish I was as clever as you.’
‘I had no idea you’d seen my work, Josie,’ he had returned her interest. ‘D’you mean the ones hanging in the store?’
‘No, sir … I mean the ones in your room. I’m sorry, I couldn’t help noticing them, what with having to make your bed an’ that. I didn’t touch anything, honest. Just stole a peep if you happened to have one on the whatsit.’
‘The easel,’ he provided.
‘Yes. There’s one I particularly like. It’s a view of Skipwith Common …’
‘You recognised it?’ he broke in delightedly.
‘Oh, yes, sir. There was no mistakin’ it. I spent a marvellous afternoon there once with my mam an’ dad an’ our Cissie. I well remember that lovely avenue of trees, all gold an’ russet – ’cause it were autumn, like. I could’ve carried on down that path forever.’
Sharing her memory, Sonny smiled. ‘Yes, it is an evocative place. I’ve been there many times – and you recognised it without being told where it was! You’re a great morale booster, Josie.’
‘Well, I couldn’t help but recognise it, it was so skilfully done. How you get the bark o’ them trees just right … an’ the colours … oh, you’re so clever!’
‘That does it!’ He had banged on the table. ‘The picture is on sale at the store right now but directly I get there tomorrow I shall take it down and you shall have it’
‘Oh, no!’ She clapped her hands to her cheeks.
‘Oh, yes! Praise like you’ve just given me deserves its reward – if it doesn’t sound too big-headed to call one of my paintings a reward.’
It did not matter that the painting in question was one of his finest and would have fetched a good price; true to his word he had brought it home and it now hung on the wall opposite her bed and was the last thing her eyes saw before she went to sleep, dreaming of its donor.
Nowadays, before he as much as touched brush to canvas and knowing how she shared his love of colour, Sonny would display each of his preliminary sketches to Josie and they would discuss them together.
It was one of these they were poring over now as Peggy glared in on them. But she did not see it. All she saw were their two heads brushing.
Sonny murmured something inaudible and Josie emitted a low, soft laugh. They were completely unaware of her presence.
Quietly she slipped back upstairs. Her angry trembling had given way to a determined calm. There was plenty of time. What she had to do would wait until tomorrow.
* * *
Somewhere through the grumbling sky the sun rose, but no one saw it. The storm had still not broken and the sullen clouds brought a timely backdrop to the events that were to take place that day.
After everyone had breakfasted and gone to work, Peggy checked on the whereabouts of the children and the domestics before carrying out her plan. A quick survey of the kitchen found Rosanna and Nick being tutored in the art of apple pie baking by Abigail. Judith, she knew, was in the master bedroom changing the sheets, there was only her arch rival to pinpoint and then she could set to work. She would teach him. Teach the pair of them.
On encountering Judith on the stairs she enquired as to Josie’s presence and was informed that the housekeeper was checking on the contents of the linen cupb
oard. ‘Shall I tell her you want to see her, ma’am?’ asked the sparrowlike maid, cocking her head.
‘And what makes you think I want to see her?’ replied Peggy icily. ‘About your work, girl!’
She watched the maid scurry off, then turned in the direction of Sonny’s room. She closed the door behind her and leaned on it momentarily ’til she decided where to start. Then with no particular method she began to pile the canvases into manageable stacks.
Struggling under the weight of a section of them she made an ungainly descent down the staircase, passing Judith once again and charging her to be silent with a narrow-eyed glare. The maid watched, open-mouthed, as Peggy stumbled past her with a pile of canvases and marched across the hall.
Three more startled faces watched her flit across the kitchen window, but she carried straight past them and on into the garden, her brow shining with the effort. Reaching the lawn she threw down her load and retraced her steps for another.
It took three trips to move all the paintings, then another to collect every tube and every bottle she could lay her hands on. On her final journey she paused to regard the portrait of Thomasin on which her husband had been toiling most of the night in order to complete it. It was still wet; the paint came off on the edge of her palms as she lifted it from the easel. She didn’t notice the smears of colour that spoilt her pink gown as she tucked it under her arm and ran down the stairs, clutching the tubes and bottles to her bosom, dropping many of them along the way.
Her face was bright red when she reached the garden. There were patches of perspiration under her arms. Her feet were sliding about in her slippers. She noticed none of this.
Taking Thomasin’s portrait from beneath her arm she gave it pride of place on the bonfire. ‘You can be Guy, Mother-in-law dear!’ she smiled viciously.
Uncorking a bottle of turpentine she sprinkled it over the pile of canvases. There was still a pall of black clouds overhead. She stared up at them. ‘Don’t you go raining on me till I’m finished,’ she threatened, then touched a lighted match to Thomasin’s face, and waited.
Josie spotted the smoke curling past the bedroom window and, frowning, went to peer out. It was not until she saw what Peggy was using for faggots that she threw open the window and shouted at the top of her voice, ‘Stop, Miss Peggy, stop!’ But Peggy chose not to hear her. She shouted again more stridently – then careened down the staircase past a startled Judith and flew out into the garden.
‘Miss Peggy, don’t!’ She began to tussle over her friend’s paintings. ‘For God’s sake don’t do this to him!’ She seized the edge of a canvas that jutted from the fire and hauled it from the flames. ‘It’d be like burning his children!’ She threw the singed canvas on the ground and attempted to rescue another. Peggy thrust her to one side, amazingly strong in her madness, and hurled the salvaged painting back onto the fire.
As quickly as Josie rescued the paintings Peggy threw them back on, enraging the normally placid housekeeper. ‘I won’t let you do this to him!’ Josie screamed and clung fiercely to the canvas that Peggy tried to wrest from her. But her grip slipped from the frame and she fell over, her splayed fingers plunging onto red-hot bubbling paint. She screamed in pain and staggered back, unable to do any more to rescue poor Mr John’s pictures, forced to watch as Peggy flung them one after another onto the blaze. ‘Please, Miss Peggy, I beg you!’ She suited to weep at the sight of his long-awaited exhibition going up in a cloud of madness. ‘Oh, don’t. How can you be so cruel?’
‘Cruel?’ The saliva frothed at the corners of Peggy’s hysterical mouth, like a hydrophobic bitch. ‘You dare to label me cruel after you’ve done everything in your power to snatch my husband away from me. You slut!’ She struck the helpless housekeeper across the face then stood sentinel over the merrily-dancing bonfire. ‘Well, this’ll teach you – and him – what happens to marriage-breakers!’
* * *
When Sonny came home at lunchtime the two kitchen-maids observed him with dumb expectancy. He asked politely where his lunch was and received only frightened looks. Exasperatedly he enquired after Josie.
‘She’s not here, sir,’ volunteered Judith, round-eyed.
‘Daddy, is it Bonfire Night?’ interrupted Rosanna from her seat at the table. The maids swapped nervous looks. ‘Where’s the fireworks?’
‘Rosanna, please don’t butt in when I’m speaking to someone; I’ve told you that before,’ said Sonny, annoyed, but more from the heat of the unbroken storm than at his daughter. The sweat was pouring off him. All he was asking for was his lunch and here he was faced with riddles. ‘Would someone kindly tell me where Josie is?’
‘But we always have fireworks on Bonfire Night, don’t we?’ whined Rosanna.
‘For Heaven’s sake it’s the middle of summer!’ cried her overheated father.
‘Can we have our dinner, then?’ asked Rosanna. ‘We haven’t had anything yet an’ we’re starving, aren’t we, Nick?’ She started to thump on the table with her fists. ‘We want our dinner! We want our dinner! Come on, Nick.’ He joined her. ‘We want our dinner, we want our dinner!’
‘Silence!’ roared Sonny, crashing his own fist onto the table. The two children ceased immediately. ‘Now, will someone – anyone – tell me: where is Josie?’
‘Mam gave her a sack of something to take home,’ Rosanna informed him. ‘She came up to tell us she was going home and she wouldn’t be here to get our lunch. When’s she coming back, Father? My tummy’s telling me off.’
Sonny turned his attention to the maids and demanded to know what had gone on. ‘It’s right what Miss Rosie said, sir,’ replied Judith. ‘The young missus sacked her.’
‘Where is my wife now?’ he exploded, and on being told rushed out into the clammy heat. ‘Peggy! Peggy, where are you?’
He saw her then, standing by the charred remains of the still-smouldering bonfire. He dashed up to her. ‘What on earth’s going on in this house? I come home for a quiet lunch to be told that you’ve dismissed Josie and find my daughter with the mistaken belief that it’s Bonfire Night. What’ve you been burning? Just what’s been going on?’
She continued to gaze down at the smouldering heap. He looked down also. A tiny square of unburnt canvas caught his eye as it levitated from the hot ashes and settled like a feather upon his boot. He stooped to pick it up – and icy fingers stroked his skin.
‘She tried to stop me so I sacked her,’ said Peggy, by way of explanation before he could speak.
‘You’ve burnt my paintings!’ It came out as a whisper as he turned the piece of canvas over and over in his fingers.
‘Yes – every frigging one!’ she spat.
‘You bloody cow!’ His hands reached for her throat, his expression one of fury. But her choking objections pierced his blind rage and he shoved her to the ground.
Peggy set up a mad baying as he ran pell-mell towards the house to see for himself, dreading what he would find …
Only the easel remained, grotesque in its nudity. Every single painting that he had painstakingly catalogued, every sketch, every tube of paint – gone. She had destroyed him. Seizing the easel he hurled it down again with a crash, swearing and damning her. Then he swayed to the window and saw through a red mist his wife still poised by the smoking bonfire as large drops began to bang against the window. How could she? How could anyone sane commit an act of such savagery?
But then Peggy wasn’t sane. She was quite, quite mad. There she stood in the pouring rain, prodding at the sizzling heap of ashes with a stick, like a witch at her cauldron.
Regathering some composure, he pivoted swiftly, went downstairs, rifled purposefully in the bureau then ran out of the house. With that one crass, selfish deed she had succeeded in killing his love where everything else had failed. As the prongs of lightning scratched the surface of the bruised sky and the rain began to fall even faster he hailed a cab and climbed into its womblike darkness.
In his pocket his fingers curled round a scr
ap of paper. On it was scribbled Josie’s address.
Chapter Forty-Five
She had been such a comfort to him, cupping his face with her poor bandaged hands and telling him he’d replace all those pictures his wife had destroyed.
‘It’s not just the pictures, Josie,’ he sighed loudly. ‘Though God knows that’s bad enough. It’s me she’s destroyed, pretending she loved me, setting me against my family … I feel so bloody awful for the times I’ve ranted at Mam on Peggy’s behalf. She was right all along, but I was too besotted to see it.’
‘People often do things which’re against their natures when they’re in love,’ soothed Josie. She had been surprised – not to say overjoyed – when he had turned up at her little terraced house.
He nodded desolately, then frowned. ‘I still can’t see why she had to go this far. She could’ve gone on living in the same house … I would’ve gone on supporting her … why, why did she have to pick on the thing I prized most?’
Josie looked away. ‘I think I’m to blame.’
‘Because she thought you and I were … ?’
She faltered, then nodded. ‘I’ll never forgive myself. I tried to rescue your pictures but she was too strong. I tried to tell her there was nothing between you an’ me …’
‘But there is, isn’t there, Josie?’ he said unexpectedly.
Slowly she lifted her face to his, then nodded. ‘I feel I’m to blame for all this … I show my feelings too easily.’
He took one of her bandaged hands gently between his. ‘You’re not to blame. If anybody’s at fault it’s me for not seeing what was under my nose. You and me … we share a lot of things, don’t we? I feel… sort of comfy with you. I can talk about my paintings and you understand straight away what I mean …’ He sighed.
‘What about your exhibition, Mr John?’
A bitter laugh. ‘What exhibition? Everything’s gone.’
For My Brother’s Sins Page 59