I swept the teacups off the table with my arm and they crashed onto the floor.
Arthur stood motionless for a moment staring at the empty table but then the bell started ringing again. I covered my ears but he reached up to it and unscrewed the clapper.
Then there was a tread on the stair.
‘It is too late,’ I said. ‘He’s coming.’
‘Darling?’ Hugh stood in the doorway. ‘There you are, I’ve been looking for you for ages. I found Clement waiting in the drawing room. He has a very exciting offer for us, why don’t you come up and join us for a game of poker?’
I did not say anything, I could not. I had my duty as a wife to accompany Hugh to the drawing room and not disgrace him in front of his friend, I had my duty to the future of my house by listening to Clement Walker’s proposal, and I had a duty to my own sense of dignity, but that was something that had always come last.
Hugh ignored my silence. ‘I was ringing for Rosalie to bring up the tea, do you know where she might be?’ Then he stopped and looked at me, the colour draining from his face. ‘Mercy, Darling, what—’ He took a step forward but Arthur put out a hand to warn him. It was only then that Hugh seemed to understand what had happened and realised that there was nothing more to be said.
Then the kitchen door opened and Rosalie came in from the coal hole, fussing with her blackened apron and clattering the scuttle. She wiped her hands on a tea towel and took a moment to catch her reflection in the shiny preserving pan that hung on the wall, pinning a stray hair back into place. ‘Oh!’ she said as she turned. ‘Sir!’ And then her eyes darted to me. ‘Madam… Arthur, but you were all so quiet, I did not know you were here.’ Then her smile seemed to melt. ‘Oh!’ she repeated, but more quietly this time.
And so she stood in my kitchen, wearing the dress that I had made for her, the mauve shawl I had paid for, and a pendant set with stones that were once meant for me. Her eyes were large and uncertain, her skin like alabaster in the light from the lamp. She had a doll-like delicacy that defied her class, one which made men like Jimmy want to go to war for her, men like Arthur want to lie for her and men like Hugh want to fuck her. Yet it was the same delicacy that had made me want to confide in her and tell her my most personal secrets, yearn for a friendship and imagine a closeness between us, and she had done nothing but betray me.
‘Bitch!’ I flew at her, grasping at her neck and clawing the skin of her throat. Her mouth fell open, in surprise I thought, not the hurt nor repentance that I wanted her to feel, and I felt her fingers on the backs of my hands, trying to pull them away, so I tightened my grip around her throat until the breath caught in her mouth. But then there were more hands, larger ones, this time on me, pulling me from her. My feet left the ground and I felt Arthur’s chest hard against my back as he lifted me away and on to the armchair by the stove and held me down firmly on the seat cushion, his hands on my shoulders.
Hugh did not move, he had watched Arthur tackle me and restrain me but all he could manage was a weak ‘Millicent, please!’
‘How could you?’ I screamed. ‘I am your wife, we share the same bed. I am carrying your child!’
Hugh stood firm and upright but his face seemed to contort and redden and I realised that it was not what I had said that concerned him, but who had heard it. Rosalie wiped a streak of blood across her pale cheek then steadied herself against the draining board and stared at Hugh, but he could not manage a response for either of us.
‘Your wife is with child, Sir?’ said Arthur at last.
Hugh straightened his back and smoothed his moustache and I saw his confidence return – an assuredness which years of army captaincy and privilege of birth had instilled in him. ‘My wife is not with child,’ he said, slowly. ‘She has thought this before and it has come to nothing. She wants for it to happen, but she is too scrawny to carry a child. She cannot hold on to the babies, they slip out of her. She has hope for longer than is prudent but it always comes to nothing. I fear that it is making her quite insane.’
‘How can you say that?’ I screamed. ‘How can you speak these lies?’ I threw myself from the chair, Arthur’s fingers breaking from my shoulders, and I ran to the kitchen door. I can remember someone pulling at my skirts but it did not stop me and I flung the door open and ran out across the Long Lawn and past the stables and out, over the darkness of the fields.
I ran until the lamps from the house had dimmed into the dusk and I recognised none of the dark silhouetted hills. I ran until my lungs burned and my legs shook so hard that they could no longer hold me. At last the sky and the earth became black and silent and I sank down into the darkness. I can remember hoping that the night would swallow me, but why I wanted that I did not know. In my mind, I knew that something had happened, but to dwell on it was too much to bear and fragments of memory flitted through my mind – a face, a word, a moment – none of them staying long enough to make any sense and instead I stared into the silence, my whole being drained of thoughts or feelings.
It was then that I felt a little twinge deep inside, as if some tiny part of me had woken. I put my hand to my stomach instinctively but told myself that my body had been through a lot and, anyway, it was far too early for such things. Had I felt my baby’s first kick? I told myself that I had imagined it but then I felt it again – the slightest of sensations, like a petal falling from a flower, a bubble bursting in sunlight, a puddle rippling with a single raindrop – and then the thoughts that I had struggled to form just moments before became complete and meaningful.
Now I no longer thought of me and I, for everything from now on would be we and us. We were alone but at the same time we were together, just me and the baby inside me. My little Kate and me.
Chapter 20
September 1915
I stood in darkness. I knew little of where I was or how I had got there but the ache in my legs reminded me that I had been walking for hours, and from the chill gripping my arms, I realised that I must have left the house hastily, without a jacket. There was a pain in my shoulders too, a pinch in the flesh on each side as if the hands that had held me down were still upon me, squeezing to the bone. There was powder under my fingernails that tasted of dry blood.
A woman had been in the kitchen that evening. A woman that had screamed and cursed and scratched at flesh until she was forced down in a chair. This was a woman I had known before, the same woman who was feared by an enormous strong-jawed hound, whose hands had the strength to shred a linen napkin without her even knowing, who came uninvited and took over my body and memory. I had watched through her eyes. I had seen what she had done.
But I had also seen what they had done: the gardener blushing when he claimed the prophylactic was his, the maid picking straw from her skirts and my husband’s hand pinching at her waist. They were all against me. I was alone, and I was the only one that little Kate could rely on.
I thought again of the christening I had imagined for her – the lace-covered baby at the font and the church strewn with white flowers – but now all I could think of were the turned heads and the whispers from the pews. I thought of the little girl in uniform at the school gates but now the playground rhymes were drowned out by the teasing from the other girls. I thought of her with Hugh but found that this was something that I could no longer imagine: I did not know whether he would be the doting father with the daughter on his lap, frills of lace spilling over his knee; or just an occasional one she would see on birthdays or high days; or a father who was reluctant, present in body alone, his eyes wandering as he listened to her recount her day at school; or one who was no more than a man in a photograph on my bedside table. Little Kate would always be mine, yet she would also be the child of an adulterer.
And then I found myself on the driveway of Missensham Grange, staring up at the grey stone and tall windows as if a stranger. The shiny motorcar that had been parked on the driveway was gone, the deep swirl of tyre tracks in the gravel all that was left behind.
/> Every window was dark and silent as if the turmoil of the day had raged through every room and left just a carcass behind. I walked round the side of the house and let myself in at the servants’ entrance, moving quietly and not lighting a lamp, but as soon as I had closed the door softly behind me, the service bell for the study rang.
I sat in the armchair, stretching my feet out to the cold embers of the stove while the bell rang constantly, but I realised I could not spend my life in either the armchair or the dark fields - the Grange was my home, it belonged to me and I could not abandon it.
I waited a few more minutes, then I got up and went upstairs. The door to the study had been left ajar, the lamplight striping the landing carpet with a dull glow. Inside, Igor lay curled on the floor, letting out a low whine when he saw me. His shoulders shuddered as if he was trying to stand, but his haunches stayed locked in position as if held down by an invisible command of ‘stay’.
A shadow sat at the desk. ‘Hello?’ It was a man’s voice but it was not Hugh’s, and the memory of the men I had raged against returned – the raw humiliation from the one who had scorned me, and the ache on my shoulders from the other who had held me down.
‘Arthur, what are you doing up here?’ I yelled. ‘Don’t you know your place? You should not be here!’
‘I’m sorry, Madam,’ he said. ‘Hugh called me up here to talk and I felt I needed to stay for your return.’
‘Well, where is he then?’ I snapped.
Arthur looked down at his hands and frowned as if trying to remember words he had rehearsed. ‘Madam, you should first know that Rosalie has left Missensham Grange for good, so you do not need to worry about her being around anymore.’
‘I knew Hugh would come to his senses!’ I cried. ‘At last he has seen that she was nothing but a common harlot. I tried to improve her but she is Oxworth through and through, so she should go back there. She has no family in Missensham, no cause to stay.’
He ignored me and continued calmly, ‘She packed her bags and left for London.’
‘London?’
‘Yes, she went with Mr Walker in his motorcar. He will find her a bed for the night and employment at his clothing factory. All you need to know is that she is gone from here.’ He was right; it was the news that I had been longing for – that Rosalie had gone.
‘So Hugh sorted out his little mess,’ I said. ‘He was at least man enough to do that.’
Arthur hesitated. ‘Actually it was Mr Walker’s idea. Hugh does not know that Rosalie has gone and even if he was to ask Mr Walker he would not find out from him. Mr Walker has withdrawn his offer for the farm and his investment in the walled garden. He said he was happy to help clean up Hugh’s mess but he did not want to do business with a man that might be tarred by scandal.’ He said the last word quietly as if he felt the shame of Hugh’s actions, but I had barely heard any of what he had said. The words seemed jumbled and failed to make sense. How could Hugh not know of Clement Walker’s plans with Rosalie? And then I realised that the room looked different without Hugh; it was not just the absence of the man, but that of his cigarettes from the desk and his pocket watch from the shelf.
Suddenly I felt a weight in my stomach. ‘Where is he?’ I said again. ‘Where was Hugh when Clement Walker took her? How can he have been here and not known?’
‘Hugh is not with Rosalie,’ he said.
‘Where is he?’ I repeated.
‘He has made other plans.’ Arthur looked down at his hands again and I saw that they were trembling. ‘He did not tell me, but he had been making them for a while. He thought it best, considering the financial situation of the estate. In fact he had the papers already arranged some weeks ago.’ He paused. ‘He might be away for a while, but at least he will be earning an income.’
‘An income?’ I echoed.
‘Yes,’ he said and he looked up at me for the first time, ‘fifteen shillings a day.’
‘Fifteen shillings?’ I whispered, but I could not say anything more for several minutes.
My body felt drained and my head ached. I could not think where Hugh would earn such money. Arthur was trying to tell me something, something that he did not dare to say out loud, but I could not make sense of it. Then the things I had seen over the past few weeks seemed to add up – a memory of Hugh as he stood in front of the bedroom mirror, pinning his service medal to his jacket, and then in the garden as he raised a branch and shot Jimmy in the chest.
‘No!’ I cried. ‘Not that, you can’t mean that!’
I sank down on to a chair and buried my face in the crook of my arm, for I could not bear for Arthur to see my face. I sat like this until the fabric of my sleeve was wet through and sobs shook my body. I had long feared abandonment by the servants, but not by Hugh, for we had stood together in a house of God and sworn that only death would part us. It was Hugh that had rescued me from a house left empty by the death of my parents and Audrey’s departure. With Hugh by my side, I had hoped to replace my old memories with new ones – ones made by the children that I would bear, but that had not happened and I feared now that it never would.
After a while I sensed Arthur standing over me and saw his feet by the chair, but I could not bring myself to look at him nor he to comfort me with his touch or offer of a handkerchief.
When I finally lifted my head, Arthur was sat back in the chair.
‘He carried the papers with him, ready and signed,’ he said. ‘But for what it is worth, he never quite could bring himself to… until now.’
‘But they will not allow it,’ I said wiping my tears. ‘He is too old, of course.’
‘Hugh was very adventurous in his youth,’ said Arthur, shaking his head slowly. ‘He lied about his age when he signed up for Tibet, so as far as the army is concerned, he is still of age.’
I sat up straight and cleared my throat. ‘Well, then,’ I said firmly, embarrassed that I had appeared so weak in front of a servant, ‘I shall go to the training ground at Evesbridge directly and I will tell them that Hugh is a married man and to be a father and they cannot accept his application.’
Igor stood up shakily and crept to Arthur, pushing his muzzle into his hands. I knew that, despite my tears, he would not have come to me, but I did wonder why he would go to Arthur and then I saw that Arthur’s hands were trembling and Igor had sensed his discomfort when I had not.
‘What?’ I said. ‘What is it?’
‘Hugh has already left for Dover,’ Arthur said quietly.
‘But the training!’ I said. ‘Jimmy says that when he leaves us he will be training for three months…’
But then I remembered that Hugh was not Jimmy. He had already served abroad as a captain and trained as a reserve every month until December when his term expired. He would not be like Jimmy with his naïve excitement, or the youths I had seen on the road to Evesbridge, marching out of step in their battered shoes. Hugh was already a soldier – trained and ready for war.
‘He said that he would be happy waiting in Dover for the next transport,’ said Arthur. ‘He thought it the right thing to do – to bring some glory back to this house rather than leave it in scandal. He wouldn’t have left if it wasn’t for’ – he paused and looked to the floor – ‘the circumstances that he had got himself into…’ But then he realised that there was nothing more that he could say, he could not justify Hugh’s actions or even find words for them, and I fancied that if Hugh had been there in the room with him, the men would have laughed off the situation. But without his master beside him, Arthur’s loyalty would not survive on just his memory. ‘Here.’ Arthur pushed a crumpled piece of paper into my hands and I sensed it was the last argument in Hugh’s defence, what was left after all the words had been said. ‘He left this for you,’ he said.
I took it from him but my sight was still blurred by tears. ‘Is it a goodbye note?’ I asked. ‘So, what does the bastard have to say for himself?’
‘No,’ said Arthur. ‘It is not Hugh’s words, but I
hope it helps.’
I wiped my eyes again. It was some kind of formal document with Hugh’s name at the top. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I can’t…’
‘It’s details of his wages as a captain. You will see that there is an allowance of four shillings a day to be paid to you as Hugh’s legal wife.’
‘Wife!’ I whispered. ‘Wife seems to mean little now, it is not just his wife who needs him, there is Kate too.’
‘Who?’ he said and then reddened as he realised he had spoken too hastily.
‘My Kate,’ I said. ‘What about my baby?’
Arthur glanced down at the floor. ‘I’m sorry, Madam,’ he muttered. It was the same tone he used when he told me that the rabbits had dug up the lawn again or the cabbages had been eaten by slugs or his spade had broken on a rock and I realised how uncomfortable he must feel to be upstairs, sitting in his master’s grand chair as the lady of the house wept in front of him. He had done his duty and wished to return to the peace of his cottage.
‘Thank you, Arthur,’ I said quickly. ‘That will do for now.’
I folded the form into my pocket and gave him a little nod.
‘Thank you, Madam,’ he said and as he stood up so did Igor, and the huge dog followed him to the door as if the study he had once called home had turned cold and forbidding without a man sat at the desk.
As Arthur reached the door, I took a breath and opened my mouth but the words could not come for I could not say that I wanted him to stay, to sit with me, to comfort me, or that I did not want to be alone, so I just put my shoulders back and nodded to him again as he turned to shut the door behind him.
I sat in silence until I heard the latch on the kitchen door, then I walked to the window, the echo of my footsteps following me through the empty house. I peered out through the dark windowpane, hoping to see Arthur crossing the Long Lawn but he had already been swallowed into the night and all I saw was the ghost of my own face reflected in the glass.
The Murderess Page 12