After the Armistice Ball

by Catriona McPherson

  Alec and I stared at each other glumly, each hoping I think that the other had something to say to him that might change his mind. After a few minutes of silence we rose to leave and drove back to Gilverton without speaking.

  ‘You stupid woman,’ said Cara, wagging her finger at me as she wheeled past me in the glittering ballroom. ‘You stupid woman,’ she called over the shoulder of her partner, possibly Alec, before he bore her away. She was wearing some kind of shroud, but a shroud encrusted with diamonds from the neck to the hem and all of the dowagers gathered around the dusty windows of the ballroom amongst the palms whispered greedily and reached out to touch her as she passed. ‘You stupid woman,’ she shouted from the far end of the room, bellowing to make herself heard above the din that was drilling into my head, making the chandeliers tinkle and causing little falls of dust from the ceiling. The noise grew louder and louder and I noticed now that it was not music after all, but footsteps. It sounded as though dozens of tiny little feet were spattering back and forth on the stone passageway above our heads, thundering about in all the rooms around us, drumming up and down the felt-covered stairs and clattering around and around in the echoing hall below.

  I lay still, waiting to see if it made as much sense awake as it had in the dream, and then, realizing that it did, I clapped my hands, threw back the bedclothes and pulled the bell. It was seven o’clock. Three hours before they were to meet at the cemetery, and just enough time, if I was lucky.

  Grant appeared, shiny-faced and frowning in her night-clothes, a frown which deepened as I told her to get Drysdale to bring the car round right now and to help me on with some clothes, any clothes, and it did not matter which.

  ‘I’ll just run your bath, madam,’ she said, to give her an excuse to leave the room and indulge her huff.

  ‘I’ve no time for a bath,’ I said. ‘Help me with this damn leg, Grant, please. I’ll have two baths when I get back.’

  Fifteen minutes later, I was in the car at the front door just in time to see Hugh open a shutter in his room and stare blearily out at me.

  ‘Pallister,’ I said, leaning out of the window and fixing him with the best haughty stare I could manage – Pallister had of course considered himself obliged to dress and present himself to see me off, for how could he have felt chagrined at the trouble I was putting him to if he had not made sure to be put to it? ‘Pallister, since you’re here. Please will you try to contact either Mr Duffy or Mr Osborne or ideally both. Tell them I am coming to town. Tell Mr Duffy to wait for me.’

  Pallister blinked pompously. He is the only person I have ever known who can do this.

  ‘And where might I find the gentlemen, madam?’ he asked.

  ‘I have no idea where Mr Osborne is,’ I said. ‘Try his mother in Dorset and see if she knows. Wake my husband to get Mrs Osborne’s number if you need to.’

  With this shocking suggestion, I swept away.

  Nothing could have pleased Drysdale more, even at this hour, than to be told to drive to Edinburgh as though his life depended on it, and I had to stop him five minutes into the journey and move into the front seat for fear I should be sick in the back. He got me there, though. I sat with my fingers crossed that we should not meet some zealous policeman on his way into work on an early shift, but he got me there. We drew up at the cemetery at ten minutes past ten. I got myself out without waiting and hobbled on my cane to the far gloomy corner where I could see the two figures, heads bowed, at the foot of the grave.

  ‘Alec! Mr Duffy!’ They turned and I saw that not only Gregory Duffy’s but Alec’s face too was wet with tears which neither of them troubled to wipe away.

  ‘Did Pallister ring you?’ I asked, but knew at once from their puzzled expressions that he had not – had not even tried, I would bet – and so if I had only been another half an hour, Gregory Duffy would have walked away and we might never have been able to find him. I determined to award Drysdale a huge tip, and to ‘get’ Pallister, as my boys say, the first chance I had.

  ‘What is it?’ said Alec.

  ‘Did you tell Mr Duffy anything else this morning?’ I said. Alec shook his head, still puzzled I think, but also with a growing look of relief. My heart swelled with pride, or with something anyway, to think that even though he did not know what it was I had thought of, knowing I had thought of something was enough to relieve him. I leaned my cane against my leg and put out my hands to take Gregory’s in mine.

  ‘Mr Duffy, Lena lost her temper, more than that – went mad – because she found out a secret that Cara had been keeping for years. You don’t know, do you? Lena’s life had gone wrong, you see, because she had the affair and so when she saw someone who had made the same mistake getting away with it and being rewarded with everything Lena thought was hers . . . Or maybe when she thought that her girl, who was good, was to be overlooked in favour of a girl who had been bad . . . I’m not explaining this very well and, you know, none of it matters.

  ‘What does matter is this. I have a piece of wonderful news for you. Some time ago, we are not sure when, Cara had a baby. You have a grandchild, Gregory, Cara’s child.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ he asked, in a whisper.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I mean, we’re sure she had the child, but we don’t know that it survived and we have no idea at all where it is, but . . .’ I stopped as a new idea suddenly emerged, like a whale from the breakers, in front of me.

  ‘It’s worth a try,’ said Alec.

  ‘A try?’ said Gregory, rounding on him. ‘It’s worth more than a try. Cara’s child? The ends of the earth, Alec, the ends of the earth. You’ll understand that one day. Now,’ he said, turning back to me, ‘where do I start? What do you know?’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I know who the father is, so you can start there. If the child survived he may well be paying for its upbringing somewhere, or if it’s been given away he might at least know who it was . . .’

  Gregory Duffy’s spurt of energy had faded again and he waved me and my bright suggestions into silence, looking down once more at the grave.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he said softly.

  Alec and I made our slow way back to the gate and sat on a bench watching him.

  ‘You know who the father is?’ said Alec as soon as we were out of Gregory’s hearing. ‘When did you find out?’

  ‘It just came to me,’ I said. We sat in silence for a moment.

  ‘Well?’ said Alec at last. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ I said, almost laughing. ‘It’s obvious. Think about it for half a minute and you’ll see.’ Alec frowned at me and then he opened his eyes wide and groaned.

  ‘Do you think Gregory will find it?’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I think he will. If it had been Lena who arranged it all, the information might have died with her. But as it is, I think he will.’

  ‘But why have you changed your mind about it being Lena?’ said Alec. ‘I can’t keep up.’

  ‘Because she can’t have known,’ I said. ‘The baby was the thing she found out about that last night at the cottage, remember.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Alec, then he frowned again. ‘Only . . . if that’s true then what was it that Lena knew about Cara? What was it she was holding over her?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘But we can’t have it both ways. She can’t have known all along and suddenly found out.’ Alec conceded this with a sigh, then he nodded towards Mr Duffy.

  ‘Do you really think it’s a good idea?’ he said. ‘Gregory looking for this baby? I hate to think of more trouble coming to him. I don’t think he could bear it.’

  ‘I shouldn’t worry about that,’ I said. ‘The question of whether or not it’s a good idea doesn’t enter into it. He has no choice. He’s seen only too clearly what can go wrong with secrets, how useless it is to keep the surface smooth when things are all wrong underneath. He won’t let Cara’s baby grow up as Cara did, out of place.’

  ‘But how
did you know he wouldn’t be angry?’ said Alec. ‘I can imagine some fathers spitting on their daughters’ graves if they suddenly heard what you just told him. I mean, look what Lena did when she found out.’

  I nodded slowly.

  ‘But Cara wasn’t Lena’s child,’ I said. ‘You heard Gregory: it doesn’t matter what your own child does, you would do anything for her, forgive her anything.’

  ‘What’s still puzzling me,’ said Alec, ‘is that for someone who was supposed to have a great hole where her morals should have been, Lena certainly showed enough outrage when she found out about Cara’s baby.’

  ‘That was the whole point,’ I said. ‘She suddenly found out that this girl into whose lap everything was to pour, was just the same as she was and while she had been punished, Cara was to be rewarded.’

  ‘Yes, but Lena wasn’t punished, was she?’ said Alec. ‘She had her houses and her diamonds and her respectability. So long as she kept quiet. It was Clemence who was punished.’

  I nodded but said nothing. Alec went on.

  ‘It was poor Clemence who suddenly found out that the “golden girl” had done the very thing that had brought such misfortune on her head. Clemence’s head, I mean. Anyway,’ he went on, ‘even if Gregory had been as angry as Lena was, it might have had the same effect – to break the spell and stop him from feeling he couldn’t go on. Is that what you thought?’

  ‘Such depths of cynicism, Alec,’ I said. ‘Why won’t you hear what you’re being told? He could forgive Cara anything, would go to the ends of the earth for her no matter what she had done, loved her more than life itself.’

  ‘I suppose so. Like Lena loved her diamonds.’

  ‘She loved her daughter too,’ I said, but he did not hear me. He was standing to meet Gregory who had turned at last away from the grave and was walking towards us.

  ‘That’s the one thing they had in common,’ I said. ‘They both loved their little girls.’ I saw Lena’s face again as it had been in the ballroom – defiant, triumphant, laughing at me, yet still trying to hide the fear in her eyes. What had she to fear by then? What was she still hiding? ‘I killed her,’ she had said, so dramatically, heroically. But of course she had killed her; that was never in question. ‘It was me,’ she had said. Of course it was. ‘And even if I hang it will still be worth it,’ she had said. But worth what? What were the diamonds if she hanged? Nothing. And what else was there?

  I watched Gregory walk away from his daughter’s grave, and knew that he would gladly have taken her place. I thought of Lena in her grave, and of Clemence halfway to Canada, and I remembered Lena’s face as she spoke those last words, just to me.

  ‘You stupid woman,’ she had said.

  Finally, the last piece fell into place. No, I thought, grasping my cane and preparing to stand. No, Lena, not so stupid after all.

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank Teresa Chris, Krystyna Green, Ken Leeder, Peter McPherson and Imogen Olsen for all the work they have done to turn a story into a book. My friends and family have been cheerleaders in all but the pom-poms and I salute them. Special thanks must go to Cathy Gilligan for friendship, wisdom and inspiration. Finally, I am delighted to have this chance to thank Neil McRoberts for his love and support and his unflinching faith in me.