by Barbara Vine
Everyone congratulated them and I asked when the wedding would be.
‘It can't be soon enough for me,’ said Eric gallantly with a hearty chuckle.
‘That depends on what you mean by soon.’ This was Winifred, her excitement over the ring giving way to her usual rather ill-tempered moroseness. ‘In about a year, I suppose. That would be the absolute soonest I could manage.’
Trollope says that her engagement is the happiest time of a woman's life. It may have been so in his day but things had changed a lot in a hundred years. Most couples who hadn't ‘anticipated’ their marriage, as the phrase still had it, unusual as that must have been, longed with good reason for their wedding day. As for now, the people next door to us in London have been engaged for eleven years, lived together for longer and probably will never marry. Engagement has become more important than ever, a recognized state which is almost a legal one, and a kind of second-class marriage. But it seemed that Winifred fitted most happily into the nineteenth century, with the exception of all that make-up which would have branded her fast if not a ‘bad woman’, and would have been content to have been Eric's companion to functions, enjoying her status as his fiancée.
For supper that night we ate poached eggs on smoked haddock with mashed potatoes and spinach, a heavy dish I had never before encountered. I took no bread with it and ate nothing more. Eric, on the other hand, ate heartily. Men of his age have told me in perfect seriousness that they got married party for love but also to have someone to cook and clean for them and do their laundry. Eric may have belonged in this category, as he probably had a lean time of it rattling around on his own in that huge Rectory, and Winifred after all was well known for her cookery and organizing of meals. He had more social skills than his prospective bride, showing an interest, whether he had it or not, in my life in Sweden, the University of Lund, my parents and siblings and what career I had in mind for myself.
‘Kerstin will get married,’ was Mrs Cosway's comment. She had overheard some of my phone conversation with Mark and was one of those who still, at that time, believed that the man a woman arranges a date with must be acknowledged as her likely future husband. ‘She has someone lined up, if what I hear is true.’
Not being Winifred, I failed to blush. ‘Who knows?’ I said in my best enigmatic tone.
‘Talking of marriage,’ said Eric, ‘when is Zorah coming back?’
What the connection was between Zorah and marriage I never found out. She had certainly been married and was now a widow but why she should have been a symbol or example of matrimony was a mystery, unless he meant she was the only one of the sisters to have had a husband.
‘She seems to have been away a long time,’ he said.
Mrs Cosway took this remark as criticism of her daughter. ‘Just three weeks,’ she said sharply. ‘And why not? It's not as if she were on a holiday. She has a home in London, as you know.’
Ida, anxious to quieten things down, said that in any case Zorah was coming back on Wednesday.
‘We shall be very pleased to see her,’ said Zorah's mother. ‘We have all missed her.’ Why did I feel this was entirely for my benefit, to deceive me? Perhaps because Mrs Cosway's face remained grave when she said it, even sullen, as if her words were in direct opposition to her feelings.
As everyone but me began eating summer pudding, Eric, back in Victorian novel mode, said he had a piece of news for us. His eyes twinkled and I expected something on the lines of a curate offered him by the Church of England if not promotion to an archdeaconry – you can tell I knew my Trollope.
‘We shall have a new neighbour,’ he said. ‘The Studio is let.’
Winifred looked the most interested. Probably she was rehearsing for her future as a supportive and encouraging wife. ‘Do you have a name, Eric?’
‘I do. I had it all from Mrs Cusp.’ He said to me in an aside, ‘The wife of one of our churchwardens, Kerstin.’ Winifred was favoured with an approving smile. ‘He is a Mr Dunhill, an artist of some sort. Mr Felix Dunhill.’
‘Felix is a cat,’ said Mrs Cosway. ‘There was a song, I believe, something ridiculous about Felix who kept on walking.’
Eric said kindly, ‘It was a play on words, of course, the Latin for a cat being felis.’
‘Yes, thank you, Eric. I am not entirely uneducated. Latin was compulsory at my school.’
‘Really, Mother!’ said Winifred, very put out. ‘Eric was merely being helpful.’
‘Is that what it was? Thank you for telling me. No doubt, he will soon tell us that Dunhill is a manufacturer of cigarettes.’
Due to Eric's unfailing good humour, no more was said, and we began to talk of the forthcoming Midsummer Supper. But the significant thing about the conversation was that this was the first time they and I had heard the name of the future tenant of The Studio, all of us of course unaware that this man would have so profound an effect on the Cosways, their lives and their very existence. Yet did he? As I write these words I have to pause and take a long look at them. I think he would have liked to have that effect but I have to ask myself whether things would have been any different if he had never come to Windrose, if he was any more than a shadow passing through their lives.
5
On her way to school, Ella dropped me at Sudbury station and I caught a train to London. There resumed – or rather, at the following weekend, resumed – my love affair with Mark Douglas, a happy and delightful relationship based on a powerful mutual attraction with occasional moments of passion. He had a room in a tall house behind Ladbroke Grove, fondly called ‘the Grove’ by the crowds of young people who were drawn to it by its almost magical magnetic powers. The sexual revolution was in full swing and we were like the girl in the song. ‘Those were the days, my friend/ We thought they'd never end.’ Mark and I made love in his hot little room where dusty trees outside the window made a permanent dusk, and afterwards walked the streets hand-in-hand to sit outside the cafés or drink in the pubs, in that carefree state which is without fear or ambition or the deadening knowledge that things must change.
We are still friends, his wife and I, my husband and he, after all these years and six children between us. I have said how we sometimes go on holiday together. Apart from the attraction, what Mark and I shared was an enthusiasm for the study of character, fairly common in women and fairly rare in men. We still do and so does his wife, while the whole business mystifies my husband, who has no interest in what makes his friends and colleagues tick or motivates his neighbours.
At that first meeting, on a Tuesday just before Midsummer, I told him about the Cosways. Unaware then that he also was a student of the mind and its emotions, I expected to see boredom lay its dulling hand across his lively face and meant to pass quickly on, but he began asking questions and analysing character and I knew that here was another aficionado.
It was his opinion that Mrs Cosway ruled the household because what real money there was she possessed.
‘Three things make for power,’ Mark said. ‘Money, beauty and perseverance.’ Perhaps unconsciously, he paraphrased a New Testament text I had heard from Eric Dawson two days before. ‘And the greatest of these is money.’ He looked gloomy. ‘Horrible, isn't it? Against everything we all believe in and aim for but it's a fact.’
‘What about love?’ I said. ‘It's supposed to make the world go round.’
‘Maybe it does. All I'm saying is that it doesn't confer power. More rubbish is talked about love than anything. Love is stronger than death, for instance. I don't know how many otherwise quite intelligent people say that.’
‘Of course love isn't stronger than death. I've never heard anyone say it.’
‘Perhaps they don't in Sweden,’ said Mark.
Next day we awaited the arrival home of Zorah Todd. Except for me. I had forgotten she was coming, having Mark on my mind as well as a determination to get clear with Mrs Cosway what my duties really were. I had nothing to do except take John for his walk each afternoon, a
n outing which, as far as I could see, he could have managed perfectly well on his own. He never spoke, he kept his eyes on the ground, walking jerkily and doggedly like someone who does a repetitive and hated job on the assembly line he sees no way of escaping. Yet these walks were his own choice. Was I there to guard him from some unknown harm committed by him or against him? I asked Mrs Cosway, though not quite in those words.
‘Of course you're not a guard,’ she said. ‘What an idea.’
She had been in a bad temper since breakfast, snapping at everyone. Oddly, though, she was better dressed and groomed than I had seen her since I arrived, the sweater changed for a diaphanous blouse, a string of pearls round her neck and rouge on her withered cheeks. I thought she must be going out but she was still at home at lunchtime and already talking of taking her afternoon rest.
‘Of course, if you don't want to go with John on a not very long and certainly healthy walk…’
‘It's not that I don't want to,’ I said with patience, ‘but that I don't think he wants me.’
‘Really, it doesn't matter whether he wants you or not, Kerstin. I can't have him going out alone and that's all there is to it. Who knows what goes on in his head?’
This sounded unpleasantly sinister to me and I decided not to pursue it. Instead, I asked her what else there was for me to do as I felt I was not earning my keep or the wage she paid me.
She shrugged, a common gesture with her. ‘If you feel like that, you can always give Ida a hand. I dare say she'd be grateful.’
Not a very congenial idea, I thought, but still I went off to the kitchen to help with lunch preparation. None was going on or it had been done hours earlier, for Winifred had taken over the kitchen, and it was a very large kitchen, to prepare the food for the Midsummer Supper to be held in the church hall that evening. Luckily, it was a cool day for the time of year, for the fridge was far too small, as English fridges always are, to hold even a quarter of the cold meats and fish starters, salads and elaborate puddings in process of preparation. Every surface was covered with dishes of food over which Winifred had spread clean tablecloths while she boiled ham and baked yet another meat pie.
At the moment I walked in, she was angrily lifting up each cloth by one corner to try to find the fly which had crawled underneath and which she could hear buzzing. She lifted her head to see who had intruded into the domain she had taken over. Her face was scarlet and running with sweat, her cheeks and eyes a smudgy mess of brown and red and black like a busy artist's palette.
‘What is it?’ Her tone was just polite.
‘I came to see if any help was needed.’
‘You can find the fly that's got in there if you like.’
I found it crawling over slices of ham and when I lifted the cloth a wasp flew out as well. Winifred retreated into a corner of the room, flapping a tea towel and shouting, ‘I hate wasps, I can't bear them, it will go for me and sting me, I know it will.’
Made angry by the wet towel, the wasp zoomed in on her, making her scream. I managed to steer it, not towards the open window as I had hoped, but out into the passage, and closed the door.
‘Thank you for that, I loathe those things. If I get a sting it lasts for days – weeks, really.’
Forbearing to say, as people do in these circumstances, that if you leave wasps alone they are unlikely to touch you, I asked her where the lunch things were so that I could lay the table.
‘Don't you know?’ she said, but she opened the various drawers and cupboards to show me and indicated the covered dishes lying apart from her Midsummer confections.
At lunch she was calmer at first and had washed the mess off her face. Mrs Cosway remarked that she wouldn't be going to the Midsummer Supper after all but Winifred and Ella could take me with them if they liked.
‘Dr Lombard coming round, is he, Mother?’ This was Ella, her tone pert.
‘That is no concern of yours,’ said Mrs Cosway.
I had no idea what this was about and hoped to learn more but Ida, to distract attention perhaps, thanked me for setting the lunch things out and this prompted me to say that in future I would give her a hand whenever she liked. I considered myself a sufficient judge of character – I turned out to be a fool in most of my judgements but not that one – to be pretty certain she was not a woman to exploit anyone making such an offer.
About halfway through the meal, the wasp reappeared from the passage where I had driven it. Clutching her napkin and waving it about, Winifred jumped up from the table and began to shriek.
‘Why doesn't someone get rid of it?’ she shouted. ‘Why is it still in the house? Someone kill it. Kill it before it stings me. You know they always sting me.’
‘One did once,’ said her mother.
Winifred shrieked that this wasn't true. She had been stung dozens of times. Still on a high note that was almost a scream she began to enumerate all the occasions wasps had stung her. ‘In Colchester that time and when we were shopping in Ipswich and on the beach at Frinton and at…’
‘Oh, be quiet!’ said Mrs Cosway.
Ida had got up and was quietly pursuing the wasp round the table as, its flight describing decreasing circles, it began circumnavigating John's head while he sat quite still, staring out of the window. Diverting from its chosen flight path, it soared quite swiftly towards Winifred, who let out a scream of pure terror and dived under the table. Ida plunged after it, flapping a newspaper which she had picked up from somewhere, and Mrs Cosway, her patience at last gone, began demanding of everyone if they had all gone mad.
Into this mayhem, through the open door from the hallway, walked a tall, slender woman, dressed as I was sure no one in Windrose had ever been before.
‘What fresh hell is this?’ she said in the words of Virginia Woolf.
Calm was restored with almost lightning speed. Only John took no notice of the newcomer, returning passively to his tinned peaches and cream. Mrs Cosway came round the table and, after a moment's hesitation, kissed the woman on the cheek. Winifred, the wasp forgotten – it had in any case disappeared – crawled out from under the table, managed a nervous smile and said, ‘Hallo, Zorah. How are you?’
This inquiry was ignored, as in my opinion it always should be since it means nothing, and equally rejected was Ida's suggestion that she might like something to eat. Mrs Cosway said to me, ‘This is my youngest daughter, Zorah.’
I held out my hand and said, ‘Kerstin Kvist,’ giving my name its correct pronunciation. It would have been difficult for me, if not impossible, to do otherwise.
‘Hallo.’ Very cool, slightly amused.
Though not what today is called a fashionista, could assess her pale pink linen dress as by Cardin and her hair, jet black and geometrically styled, as cut by Vidal Sassoon. She was taller than her sisters but less good-looking. Let me qualify that and say that Zorah Todd's features lacked the classical proportions of Winifred's or Ida's but few would have noticed or have held to this judgement for long. Her stylishness, her charm and something less definable, a graceful poise, the reverse of diffidence, overcame any deficiencies of appearance. The turn of her head was that of a great actress, a Garbo perhaps, and if her graceful movements had a fault it was that they looked studied. For that reason, in a deportment contest, she would have been awarded ninety-seven marks out of a possible hundred.
She went up to her two sisters and kissed them, pausing to lift Winifred's left hand in hers. The ring made her smile but in a kindly way and she congratulated her sister on her engagement as if she were genuinely pleased for her.
‘I'm so happy for you, darling. Eric is a very nice man.’
‘Darling’ was not a word I had previously heard from any Cosway. Finally, Zorah went up to her brother and, knowing better than to touch him, said, ‘Hallo, you,’ in a warmer, more intimate tone than I had heard any of them use. He looked at her in his bemused way, managed a half-smile. I noticed that his hands were shaking.
‘Is there anyone around w
ho can take my bags up?’ she said. ‘I've got rather a lot of luggage.’
If I had been asked I would have refused but no one asked me. Ida said that Mrs Lilly, the twice-weekly cleaner, would be arriving at two. She would do it. Zorah nodded. Here, and in Zorah's entrance and manner, was food for thought and something to tell Mark. Where, for instance, did this vision sleep while she was here? In one of those stark and grimly furnished bedrooms, I supposed, sharing a bathroom with four other women and her brother. It seemed impossible. To produce that exquisitely toned and polished appearance, that skin, those nails, that hair, would surely take hours of attention. Or did she go daily to Chelmsford or Colchester for professional services? That would in theory have been possible since she must have arrived by car. As I walked into my own room, preparing to take John out, I saw her car outside on the drive, parked where Ella's had been that morning. Unless, like the pumpkin in Cinderella becoming a golden coach, the battered old Volvo had been transformed into this white Lotus with red leather seats.
Zorah did not reappear that afternoon and the Lotus remained where it was. I was sorry, because my curiosity about her built up to such a height that only my unwillingness to disturb Mrs Cosway and ask the whereabouts of her room stopped me tapping on her door. The kiss she had given Winifred and her kind remark about Eric Dawson led me to believe this sister must be closer to Zorah than the others. I found Winifred in the kitchen, occupied in rotating dishes of party food from fridge to table and others from table to fridge. The refrigerator was far too small to accommodate many plates at a time and Winifred compromised by giving one set of salads and cold meats half an hour's chill, then the second set, and so on, alternating I suppose throughout the afternoon. It seemed rather unhygienic but I said nothing. Winifred had her own comment to make.