by Barbara Vine
‘You and I are nearer to each other in age than you are to the others,’ she said in a cosy, all-girls-together voice, though Zorah's age was nearer to mine and even then not very near. ‘I know you've been wondering what's the point of you going on those walks with John and I thought I'd enlighten you.
‘The fact is he wants it that way. John, I mean. He insists on that walk. You try stopping him. It's this compulsion thing he has. Just like he must arrange those things he carries about in his pocket and he must cut his bread up in patterns and turn his eggshell the other way up, so he has to go on that walk. If it's absolutely pouring and he can't go he'll make an awful fuss, you'll see.’
I nodded and said I had to thank her for letting me borrow a book from her room.
‘Any time,’ she said and, ‘you're welcome,’ which English people hardly ever said then. ‘Did my mother show you the library?’
I said she had mentioned it but I understood the door was kept locked.
‘That's a lot of silly nonsense,’ said Ella. ‘I'll show it to you some time. It's quite interesting.’
‘A lot of rare books?’
‘Well, a lot of books. I don't know about rare. That's not what it's interesting for but you'll see.’ Ella was fond of telling me that I would see and I usually did in time. ‘I've a feeling you and I are going to be friends, Kerstin. I'd like that.’
Of course I had to say that I would too and I had begun to feel kindly disposed towards this pretty woman who was so obviously insecure and self-doubting. But my thoughts were concentrated on the prescription Mrs Cosway had brought back from the doctor, and suddenly, while Ella continued to talk, this time about her school and her problems with form Five B, the elusive definition came to me. Largactil was a preparation of a powerful drug called chlorpromazine hydrochloride and it was used to treat patients undergoing behavioural disturbances or who are psychotic. It also allayed severe anxiety. It therefore seemed quite a reasonable medication for the schizophrenic John Cosway.
7
I became obsessed with the diary. The physical part of it, the leather-bound book, had been given to me by a friend for my birthday and when it first arrived I thought it the least useful present I received. I had never kept a diary, I had never expressed a wish to keep one or regrets for not doing so. But here it was, a handsome volume, a couple of hundred pages thick inside its cover of red leather and gilt, and it found its way into my suitcase because of its looks and as something to put in the pocket on the inside of the lid.
I began to write in it only, at first, to describe the countryside and Lydstep Old Hall, having a feeling that a record of this place might be useful to me in later years. After that came descriptions of the occupants of the house, and once I had begun on their characters and conversations I was hooked. Sometimes I could hardly wait to escape from the drawing room and the company when the old black and white television was on, its grainy picture rippling and rolling, and Mrs Cosway gazing at it grimly, to go upstairs, open the diary and begin to write.
If I had been in her place or if I had been any of the others, I would have hated the very idea of it, as she did and they did when they found out. In my defence I can say I tried to be charitable and fair in what I wrote and of course I never dreamt that the time would come when I would hand this chronicle of events at Lydstep Old Hall to the police. Not the least idea of what was to come entered my mind when I committed my observations and thoughts to those pages. If anyone had warned me that they would be read by police officers and psychiatrists I wouldn't have believed it. Unless it is lent or stolen, what circumstances can there be in which a private diary is read by others? Only perhaps, as in this case, when what it records supplies evidence of a crime. I had no choice but to offer it to the police, though I have to say that there was no coercion and I gave it up to them willingly.
The first drawing I did, the one of the house, was on one of the diary's endpapers because I had no other paper. Zorah, looking like a fashion plate, was in there too and for the same reason. On my day off I took the bus into Sudbury and bought paper but using it didn't feel the same. For one thing, it wasn't the thick cream vellum of the diary but thin white stuff, and it was loose, just slippery sheets, and there was nothing in the room to rest on but the diary itself. I didn't know it then, because I had no plans for the future or ideas of what it would be, but this decision of mine to keep up my drawing, and on the pages of the diary itself, formed a habit for me which some have called eccentric. When I began my cartoons I found they would only work if I did them in a notebook. Since then I have always done this, I can't make any sort of drawing (except the Dog Growing) on a loose sheet, and over the years I've torn out the page with the cartoon on it and sent it by post, then by fax, and lately have scanned them and sent them by email attachment.
The next sketch I made in the diary was of Felix Dunsford.
I had no difficulty in recognizing him from Zorah's description. No one else in Windrose had shoulder-length black hair or hands quite so ostentatiously paint-stained. I had walked into the village one morning to do some shopping Ida had no inclination for and probably no time either. Windrose wasn't well endowed with shops. There was a good butcher, quite famous in north Essex, a general store that was also the post office and newsagent, and a greengrocer. The days when English villages would have either no shops at all or else a designer boutique and a hairdresser were still a long way in the future. I encountered Felix Dunsford in the general store, where he was buying cigarettes and a packet of tea.
I have said that for the most part the village people were middle-aged or elderly, so it was probably my youth which made him look me up and down in an appraising way. But it was a rude way just the same.
In a phrase I had picked up from Mark, I said, ‘You'll know me again.’
‘Sorry,’ he said, and, ‘it was only an admiring glance.’
Such a remark tells you more about a man's nature than any amount of listening and observation. I went up to the counter and asked for the things Ida wanted. The eyes of the other people in the shop were on me, and disapprovingly. One woman positively scowled. I wanted to laugh but controlled myself. Holding Ida's shopping basket in one hand and a paper carrier full of vegetables in the other, I walked back to find Winifred at the kitchen table, writing a menu and a list for a dinner party booked for the following Saturday week. When I remembered the chaos and panic of the Midsummer Supper I was glad that was my weekend off and I'd be in London.
‘I've seen the painter,’ I said, knowing by now that retailing bits of gossip was almost a bounden duty in that household.
‘What's he like?’
Zorah had already told her and so had Mrs Lilly. ‘Good-looking. Long hair.’ Better not mention the appraising stare, I thought. ‘He was in the shop buying cigarettes.’
‘Eric is bound to pal up with him,’ Winifred said. ‘He always takes up with new people whether they go to church or not. He says it's his function but I think he likes it.’
She insisted on reading her menu to me. It seemed very elaborate for a country dinner, for this was long past the days of big house parties and before England became cuisine-aware: prawn and lobster cocktail, leek and potato soup, roast lamb, mint sauce, redcurrant jelly, duchesse potatoes, new peas, a Pavlova and a hazelnut tart, Stilton and biscuits.
‘What's a Pavlova?’ I said.
‘A sort of meringue with raspberries and cream. Do you think it will do?’
‘They'll love it. But will they get through all that?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Ida. ‘No problem out here. I suppose you'll want to take over the kitchen on Saturday. I only ask because it puts Mother in a bad temper if she doesn't get a good lunch at the weekend.’
Winifred threw down her pencil. ‘It's my living!’ she shouted. ‘You don't earn anything and nor does Mother and as for John – God knows he doesn't need it. What am I supposed to do if I can't have the kitchen for an hour to earn my living? It's my job.’
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br /> ‘Of course you must have the kitchen.’ Ida said in the tone of someone much put-upon. ‘Of course. I'll manage.’
The previous weekend I had been in London and by the time this Sunday came round I had almost forgotten the only one I had so far spent at Lydstep.
‘You'll come to church?’
Winifred's inquiry was more in the nature of a command. She had attended Holy Communion one morning in the week, so was at breakfast with us this Sunday.
‘Eric will be taking Communion after Matins today.’
‘I'll come,’ I said, not revealing my vague knowledge about this appendage to the service.
John sat at the table, his toast eaten and his tea half-drunk, contemplating his folded hands which lay on the tablecloth, trembling faintly. They seemed to have an hypnotic effect on him as if they might send him into a trance or had already done so. In the light of my recovered knowledge, I questioned why a man so apparently lifeless and calm would need Largactil but perhaps he was only lifeless because of the Largactil.
Isabel Croft might answer this question for me, I thought, as we set off for church. She had phoned the day before at a blameless hour to invite me, not to meet for lunch but to come and have it with her at her house. As a child Isabel had stayed at Lydstep Old Hall in her holidays and been quite close to Zorah, whom she still occasionally met. She could also tell me about the maze I had been unable to find.
Though covering the head hadn't been a rule in the Church of England for more than twenty years, Winifred insisted on wearing a hat. As a special mark of piety, I suppose, designed to impress Eric Dawson and not so very different from the habit of those Muslim girls one sees today who wear a miniskirt and low-cut top but the hijab tied round their heads and covering their necks.
We filed into what Ella grandly called ‘the Cosway pew’ and the two of them fell on their knees to make their silent devotions. The organist was playing a cantata which seemed familiar and after a moment or two I recognized the work of the Swedish composer Josef Martin Kraus. This was the music he wrote for the birthday of Gustav III and it made me want to meet this organist and ask about his rare choice of a voluntary by a composer who hadn't even found his way into the Oxford Companion to Music.
The pews began to fill up, in so far as they ever did, with Cusps and Walthams, Mrs Lilly and her husband and several of the people who had been in the general store when I went shopping there. Ida and Zorah never went to church and Mrs Cosway only rarely. There seemed some mystery about Ida's staying away for she had apparently once been a devout attender. Much to my surprise, when I thought the entire congregation were in their seats, Felix Dunsford came in. Instead of choosing a pew at the back, he came right up to the front and sat down on the other side of the aisle from ourselves.
His appearance caused a stir. This was partly due, I suppose, to the length of his hair. Long hair on men was common in cities then but not in the conservative countryside, where the short-back-and-sides was not only de rigueur but almost a moral duty. It was soon after this that I heard Mrs Waltham say of a teenage boy that he must be a bad lot because he had hair which covered his collar. Felix Dunsford's was much longer than that. He wore a jacket of sorts, linen and crumpled, very unlike the suits complete with waistcoats the other men had on and which filled the church with the reek of mothballs and sweat. His trousers were jeans and paint-stained at that. I judged him the sort of painter who takes pains to leave no one in ignorance for a moment of the art he practises.
Winifred was staring at him in horror. She made a move to get up and I wondered what she was going to do but at that moment Eric appeared, went to his desk by the choir stalls and, calling us ‘dearly beloved’, began asking us to accompany him to the throne of the heavenly grace. Also fascinated but in a less disapproving way, Ella sneaked glances at Dunsford, pretending her eyes were on a wasp which buzzed around conveniently between his row and ours. While we sang ‘Dear Lord and Father of mankind’ – I thought the next line, ‘Forgive our foolish ways’, particularly apt – she gazed past me at Dunsford and the wasp which, alighting on the hand which held Hymns Ancient and Modern, was crawling up his thumb towards the nail. It paused on a green paint stain it perhaps took for a leaf. Dunsford seemed undisturbed by it and continued to sing in a fine baritone voice. If it is true that staring at someone will eventually make him look at you, her gaze had that effect on Dunsford, for he turned his head and, still singing, winked. Ella abruptly jerked her head round to face Eric and the wasp flew off.
All this time Winifred, the wasp-phobic, had been trembling and shrinking, flapping her hands and sometimes shutting her eyes. She only relaxed when the insect soared off into the hammer beams above our heads. The congregation recited the Te Deum’ in the kind of sepulchral voice mourners might use at the mass funeral of everyone they held dear, and we settled down to hear Eric preach on the laudable subject of loving one's neighbour as oneself. It made me wonder if he did so and I decided he probably did. Felix Dunsford had closed his eyes and seemed to have fallen asleep.
As things were drawing to a close, Winifred whispered to me, ‘Have you been confirmed? You can't take Communion if you haven't.’
If I was anything, I was a Lutheran as my parents were, if they were anything. I had no idea if I was confirmed or even if the Lutherans had confirmation but I nodded to save trouble. My church visit was too enjoyable to be cut short just yet. The turmoil Felix Dunsford was causing, especially among the women in the congregation, was an unexpected treat and I wanted to see what would develop.
Eric and Mr Cusp went through a ritual with a chalice and a silver box and people began moving out of the pews and lining up. I wish I knew the terms which were used and what the language meant, but I didn't and I'm told all is changed now. I had no understanding of Eric's meaning when he addressed us nor much of what we were doing kneeling on hassocks and waiting for the bread and the wine. Of course I was not ignorant of the significance of the ceremony but I expected a wafer on my tongue was that the Roman Catholics? – not a cube of white bread and I was surprised by the sweetness of the dark red wine in the chalice.
‘Blood of Christ, shed for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life. Drink this in remembrance that Christ's Blood was shed for thee and be thankful.’
Everyone said Amen when it was their turn so I did too. The kind of superstitiousness of which we all have remnants brought me a stab of fear because of my probably unconfirmed state, but of course no divine retribution came down to strike me. I was hazy as to whether we were supposed to believe we were actually partaking of Christ's blood and body by a miracle of transubstantiation or if all this was a symbol. There was no one I could ask without ignominy. Felix Dunsford continued to sit in his pew with one leg crossed over the opposite knee, apparently studying the people as they went up. Most of them, when they returned to their seats, fell on their knees and buried faces in hands. I sat where I was, looking at the saints behind the altar, the Gospel makers with lion, angel, bull and eagle, wondering if I was in a state of grace. Or was that too a Catholic concept?
Felix Dunsford grinned at me and, after a small hesitation, I smiled back. I was thinking how I could get to meet the organist. At least I could find out his name and where he lived. It was Winifred whose behaviour brought me to look in Dunsford's direction again. When everyone had made their communion, Eric recited a bit more from the Book of Common Prayer and the service was over. My husband is an Anglican and it has always amazed and amused me how quickly the transition is made in his church between an atmosphere of sombre reverence and one of a community centre. Even while the organist was playing – Zadok the Priest this time – the congregation, transformed into social club members, were chatting away, gossiping, issuing invitations, asking after missing relatives. In her future Mrs Rector's capacity, I suppose, Winifred passed on some piece of information to her friend June Prothero, and then she went over to Felix Dunsford.
‘May we have a word?’ I hea
rd her say.
‘Sure.’ He gave her a cool but friendly grin. ‘Sure.’ He held out his hand. ‘Felix Dunsford at your service.’
‘Winifred Cosway. Mr Dawson, our Rector, is my fiancé.’
‘That's nice. Congratulations. I like your ring.’
This wasn't at all what Winifred had expected but she said a brief thank-you and assumed her Sunday school teacher's manner. ‘I just wanted to say – and you mustn't take this amiss – that your clothes aren't quite suitable for church. Not very complimentary to Mr Dawson, do you think?’
‘You want me to take them off?’
He was rewarded by one of the finest blushes he can ever have seen. It began in Winifred's cheeks and spread across her whole face, colouring her neck and the skin revealed by the V of her neckline. ‘Please,’ she said, and then, realizing what she implied, ‘Of course not I meant you to wear something a little more – well, formal, next time you come.’
He was laughing. ‘What if I haven't got anything a little more formal?’
By this time Winifred must have been wishing she had never started this. ‘I'm sure you have. I'm sure you can find something.’
‘I'll tell you what. Why don't you come round and have a look for me? Next Sunday morning before I get dressed?’ He patted her on the shoulder and walked off, still laughing.
Winifred put her hand up to where he had touched her as if she had been stung by the now-vanished wasp. ‘What an insufferable man.’
‘You asked for it,’ said Ella, ‘putting your spoke in.’