The Shape of Sand

by Marjorie Eccles

  “First, we must make ourselves comfortable. Some coffee, perhaps?”

  “Oh yes, of course, I must have interrupted your breakfast. I – I’m sorry.” She looked distracted.

  “No matter.” He gave her a quick glance. “But I think it better we take things slowly, hmm? You make some of your good coffee, while I read this.” She would be better occupied doing some mundane task – and he knew the coffee would be excellent. She who had been waited on hand and foot all her life had, during the last six years, been forced by circumstances to manage this not inconsiderable house very capably with only the help of daily women, and, if it suited her, could be surprisingly competent at many household tasks. “By the way, where is your husband?”

  “At Stoke Wycombe, where else?”

  Her high heels clicked on the parquet as she walked with her usual swift, impatient pace to the kitchen, where he soon heard the rush of water, the welcome clatter of crockery. He did not function well without breakfast, and his Viennese soul was yearning after his abandoned coffee and rolls.

  He was left alone in the restful room, its decor the modish style of ten years ago, unmarred by any wartime austerity. Black-out blinds had now been taken down, and the crisscrossed brown paper reinforcing strips across the window panes removed. All was cool, neutral colours with touches of black, furniture with clean Modernist lines, the vivid geometric pattern of the curtains at the tall windows the only splash of colour, apart from the pictures. Another painting, he noticed, had been reinstated. Chagall? he wondered, as he sat down with the newspaper, companion for the Kokoschka, the Kandinsky, the other vibrant examples of modern art hanging on the walls, which Wycombe had acquired pre-1939. In his old age, he had become a connoisseur and passionate collector of all things modern in the world of art – even to the extent of selling other, less recent acquisitions, to buy them, in the confident certainty that they would accrue in value. The Randolph fortunes, though by no means negligible even yet were, like so many others – albeit in a nation that had won the war – victims of a shattered economy. Most of his art treasures had been safely stored away for the duration, but were now being brought back into the light of day and, under his supervision, hung once more where they belonged. Undoubtedly that was what was occupying him in the country at this precise moment.

  Schulman picked up the paper and instantly saw the reason for Vita’s agitation as the headline, and the name Jardine, sprang out at him. He read what followed and then folded the paper neatly once more and sat waiting, thinking what to do. When he could smell the coffee, he went into the kitchen to bring the tray in for her. It was as good as he’d imagined it would be, though he sighed a little, regretting the absence of even a biscuit to go with it. It was unlikely there was such a thing in the house. Food was not a priority with Vita. He debated whether to ask for some toast, but in the circumstances, decided against it.

  She extracted a Balkan Sobranie cigarette from the silver box on the mantelpiece for herself, knowing he didn’t smoke, and flicked an enamelled table lighter before coming to sit next to him on the sofa. Her fingers were still not quite steady.

  “When did you hear of this?” he asked.

  “Last night. Daisy and Guy came to tell me. She and Harriet had been to Charnley to-” Her voice faltered.

  “Last night? And only now do you let me know? Oh Vita, Vita!”

  “I needed to think it over on my own – don’t you see that? Oh, they wanted me to go back with them, or for them to stay with me, but I couldn’t have borne it. All the talk, all those memories!” She tapped out some ash into the onyx ashtray. Her fingers were thin, her polished fuchsia fingernails immaculate. “Well, now you’ve read the article, what do you think?”

  “I think it is a very terrible thing to have happened, very hard for you, and your sisters, to accept. But when you can do so, it will be better. It will establish a conclusion, bring an end to many years of uncertainty. You will at last be able to mourn your mother properly.”

  “Do you think so? Do you really think that’s all there is to it, Oscar? What about finding the person who killed her?”

  “The police–” he began, then stopped, finding himself more afraid for her than he had thought possible. He resumed, carefully, “You will have to prepare yourself for a great deal of intrusion into your private life, both past and present.”

  “It’s already started. I’ve had Harriet on the phone this morning, warning me that the police will be coming to see me. I’m afraid she’s annoyed with me because I won’t do what she wants.” She gave a brittle laugh.

  “And what is it that she wants you to do?”

  “She’s acquired some of the family papers, and it’s given her some crazy idea about reconstructing everything that went on at that time …”

  “Would that be such a bad thing?”

  “I can’t do that, Oscar! I can’t, and you know why.” She looked away, but not before he thought he saw the glint of tears flickering on her lashes.

  He said, firmly and quietly, turning her round and holding her gaze, “No, I do not know why, not fully. Do I?”

  There was little he hadn’t learned about her insecurities, her image of herself, her relations with her family, after those long sessions spent with her, letting her talk, patiently listening. But gradually, even as the layers stripped away, he had been bound to admit that they had never reached the very centre, the root of what it was that had ultimately ended in her breakdown. Somehow, even in deep therapy, she had not let go, had managed to keep something back. There was something she wouldn’t let herself acknowledge, that she was hiding from, afraid to face. Always, no matter how gently he had led her, she had withdrawn at the crucial point. And there he’d had to leave it, only to approach it obliquely, the next time. Sensing her need to cooperate, he’d been prepared to wait until she did. But each time, when she had almost reached the point, was in fact teetering on the brink, she’d abruptly wrenched herself back. There came a time when she’d refused any more treatment.

  He knew that any further approach had to come from her, that she must ask to be released from the burden she carried. Was this, now, the time? Was this dramatic discovery of her mother’s body to be the catalyst, the shock she needed? How could he suggest it to her? He began to say, gently, “Don’t you think it is time you let yourself remember–”

  “No, No! You mustn’t ask me!” She screwed the cigarette butt angrily into the ashtray, looked up and, with an abrupt swing of mood, said in a trembling voice, “Of course, Oscar, you’re right, as usual. I do have to tell you, I can see that. But it’s not a case of allowing myself to remember. I don’t think I’ve ever – really —forgotten – it’s just that it seemed too shameful a thing to suspect, or that I was putting the wrong construction on it.”

  He gave her time to get herself together, not revealing his exultation. At last!

  “After my boys died,” she went on eventually, her voice not quite under control, “well, you know how that affected me, losing both of them, at once. But I’d been obsessed by thoughts of death long before that – everyone dear to me seemed to die and leave me – Marcus – my father. And my mother … my mother, most of all. I became tormented by thoughts of whether she was actually dead or not, where she might be … and then, quite suddenly, when I heard she’d been found, something I’d seen the night she died came back to me, and I put two and two together and made the connection–” She stopped, overcome.

  “Can you tell me about it – if it is not too painful?” These moments of eidetic memory could be unbearable. He held her hands to stop their trembling.

  “I think – I think I must, now.”

  Later, into the silence that followed the outpouring of all she had previously held back, Vita said in a choked voice, “Dear Oscar, I shouldn’t have transferred my burden to you.”

  “But you see. You feel better, hmm?”

  And she did, a little.

  “I should have guessed what it meant, sh
ouldn’t I? But I didn’t, until it was too late. I was married to him by then.”

  “You were not to know. You had led a sheltered life. And you were very young.” And, he wanted to ask her, but did not, are you sure?

  “Yes, I was, wasn’t I? Young and so naive.”

  Abruptly, she rose and left the room, returning with a few old, faded sepia photographs. “There you are, that’s what I was like when I was young.” One by one she passed across pictures of a plump, vivacious, exceedingly pretty girl. “Me, dressed for the hunt. And me again when I was a child, with Marcus, and Harriet holding Daisy, the new baby. And here’s one with Dolly Dacres, my dearest friend. I was to be her bridesmaid, until … Look, here’s this, actually taken on the night – the night Mama died.” Finally she fell silent as he took this last picture from her, one where she was dancing, barefoot, with her sisters, clad in filmy garments of a vaguely classical nature. He looked from the laughing girl with the sparkling eyes and rounded limbs to Vita as she now was. She had begun to weep; big, silent tears which poured down her cheeks, tears he knew were a necessity, and he was filled with a tenderness he had never known before. He took her in his arms and laid her head on his shoulder. Presently she was able to speak again, though her words came disjointedly. “You see how it has been for me? I knew I was cowardly not to ask him about it, but I owed it to him to keep my part of the bargain. He’d married me, and kept me, and he’s always been so kind to me – that’s what I thought, don’t you see? But now, now that she’s been found – oh God!”

  Yes, indeed, he saw how it had been for her, and at what cost? Even he could find nothing to say for the moment, he could only shelter her in his arms. They stayed like that for several minutes, while he gently stroked her cheek.

  “I smelled coffee as I came in so I’ve brought myself a cup. One to spare?”

  They froze. How long had he been standing there? Just how long? The master of the house himself, standing at the half-open double doors to the room, smiling and holding a cup and saucer. Perhaps he’d been there some time, surveying the tableau in front of him. His wife, obviously overwrought, her beautiful make up smeared, being held by the man sitting on the sofa next to her. The air vibrating with emotion. She turned as if in slow motion towards him and for a moment didn’t seem to register who he was. Then her gaze refocused. “Myles!” She blinked and threw a hurried glance at Schulman, and received an almost imperceptible nod. Her voice was husky with tears, but controlled, when she spoke. “I didn’t hear you come in. You should have let me know you’d be coming.”

  He walked towards her with his upright, military carriage and bent stiffly to kiss her, still holding the cup and saucer. In a seemingly involuntary movement, she turned her head, and the kiss landed somewhere in the region of her ear. “It was an impulse,” he answered, “after Harriet telephoned me with the news. I knew what a shock it would be for you. No time to telephone you if I was to catch the train down – you all right, my dear?”

  Vita said, “How can any of us be all right?”

  “Well. Well.” He seemed at a loss as to what else to say. “Schulman, how are you?”

  “I am well, thank you. There is no need to ask how you are!”

  It was difficult to believe Wycombe was the age he was, an unbelievable eighty-six. His hair was white, and time had etched lines on his face, but he still had the soldierly bearing and physique that many a man twenty years younger would have envied, the same austere, direct look that told of the drive and initiative to carry through any course of action he intended. Seeing his pictures restored to their proper places seemed to have released a new source of energy in him. They were the only things in life he cared passionately about now. Perhaps once, he and Vita … but he had always been a man difficult to read, seemingly stiffly inculcated with military attitudes. And yet, deep within him had existed that love of beauty, and a capacity for deep affection, such as he’d had for his sons. And possibly other areas of his life that no one, least of all Vita, could ever have suspected. It was understandable why Wycombe had married a beautiful young woman thirty years his junior – he had wanted an heir, and a hostess – but it was difficult for even Schulman, practised at reading motivations as he was, to accept the reasons why Vita had married him. Theirs was a strained relationship now, whatever it had once been, but he had supported her throughout her breakdown, and that had not been easy, God knew. Rigid in his attitudes, he had always done the right thing, an officer and a gentleman to the last.

  At that juncture, Wycombe’s eyes registered the old photographs on the table and he stiffened.

  “How long are you here for?” Vita asked as she poured his coffee, unaware of his glance.

  “What? Oh, a day or two. Must get back. The packers, you know …”

  It was difficult to say what might have transpired then, had the police not arrived.

  Harriet had finished marking her stack of papers by eleven, made herself a cup of coffee and lit a cigarette. She’d tried to spin the job out but she’d known it wouldn’t take her all that long. The day stretched before her. An idea entered her mind, so unexpected it took her breath away for a moment. Almost without making a conscious decision, she squashed out her cigarette and picked up the phone – she would make a couple of quick calls, and if by doing so she could arrange a meeting, she would just have time to change into clothes suitable for Town before the next bus at twelve. She’d already told Nina to take the front door key. “In case I’m not in when you get back. We’re nearly out of bread and I may be down at the shop. I’ll use the back door.”

  Recalling this little exchange now, it occurred to her that maybe the idea was not so unexpected after all, that she’d known what she was going to do all along. Yesterday, the world had shifted on its axis and it was imperative that she must do something to restore the balance of her life. Best get this over with. It would, after all, sooner or later become inevitable.

  13

  His latest skin graft had taken well, and his plastic surgeon had assured him he’d soon be able to get back home, to Egypt. The treatment had been lengthy, and during the last year, endeavouring to come to terms with his new face, Tom Verrier had sometimes questioned his own motives in volunteering to join up on the outbreak of hostilities. It was a question to which he’d never actually found the answer, apart from the fact that he’d felt a strong compulsion to do his bit in this European war in which the different homelands of both his parents were involved – an unnecessarily quixotic compulsion, in his father’s opinion, but then Egypt had, in effect, become Michel Verrier’s adopted country and his native France a distant memory. He was a precise, ironic man, still working on the various important digs on which he and Tom’s mother, Rose, had worked, he as an archaeologist, she on the restoration of wall paintings. When Tom had talked of volunteering, Michel, pragmatic Frenchman that he was, had suggested that some sort of job could have been found for him in Egypt, perhaps working in a civilian capacity with an army intelligence unit based there, but he didn’t bring any emotional pressure to bear, though he wasn’t getting any younger, and must have been aware that the chances of their ever meeting again could be uncertain. But he’d known Tom well enough to realise that the restless itch he had in his blood, that damned uncomfortable penchant for adventurous travel to remote places of the earth, couldn’t be contained by some desk-bound position while a war to end all wars was being fought on the other side of the world.

  The Declaration had come at a time when Tom had actually been at home, having just returned from Peru, where he’d been gathering information on the Inca civilisation. He realised his next project would have to remain on hold for the duration, but his in-built restlessness would need some other outlet. He’d picked the Fleet Air Arm for no better reasons than it obviated the necessity for choosing between the Air Force and the Navy, and that they were prepared to accept him, which he felt was as good a reason as any.

  He’d flown Swordfish aircraft from the battlesh
ip Warspite and his luck had held out until the day he’d been catapulted off in the Mediterranean to attack a German U-boat, when he’d been hit by enemy fire and spiralled into the sea in flames. He was damn lucky not to have been either drowned, like the rest of his crew, or fried to a crisp. As it was, he was pretty badly burned and knocked up in other ways, and was sent first to the burns unit in the naval hospital at Basingstoke, then transferred for special treatment when things went wrong to East Grinstead as a patient of Dr Archibald MacIndoe, a breezy but temperamental New Zealander who was pioneering plastic surgery on young airmen, who cut through red tape like a hot knife through butter and wouldn’t take no for an answer. Months of skin grafts followed, with interminable hanging about in between. Going home between his treatments wasn’t an option, home being the flat in Heliopolis he shared with his father, largely unoccupied because Michel was usually away working on some dig or other and Tom exploring in the Andes, the Himalayas or some other far-flung part of the globe. He could have wangled a lift on some RAF plane or other had he been so inclined, but what was the point, simply to stay in the empty flat?

  By now, MacIndoe was saying, give it another few weeks, another slight operation, and Tom could be looking towards being discharged, demobilised and on his way home. Meanwhile, he’d bought himself an old Riley Nine, ten years old and still full of guts, and when he could scrounge petrol, he spent his time tootling around, looking at old churches and villages that were there before the Norman conquest, castles and cities with ancient streets, crooked little houses and cathedrals that took his breath away with their calm beauty. He’d fallen in love with England – even its weather, which gave it its green, lush countryside, so different from the arid landscapes of his own homeland – and with nearly everything else about it, its air of genteel shabbiness, battered London theatres, village pubs. He had a feeling his next book, rather than being set in the remote stretches of the Hindu Kush, as planned, might be centred upon little old England.