‘What happened?’
‘One of the servants from the manor enlisted in my regiment. He was friendly with Peggy, the lady’s maid, and she told him that my wife Isabella had been running around with the local doctor, Matthew Greaves, that they had become more and more brazen since I’d gone away, and that the whole village was talking.’
‘But you didn’t love Isabella! You didn’t care about her!’
‘La Belle Dame was a witch, and witches enchant. She had her ways. It’s true I didn’t love her, but I couldn’t get enough of her, and there I was in a trench in France, up to my eyeballs in mud, and there she was, in my warm clean bed with the young doctor. I couldn’t bear it. Can you understand that?’
‘I think I can understand jealousy.’
‘Yes. Jealousy. Perhaps even more than that. Obsession. I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking clearly, and that’s how I got wounded the first time. Thoughts of my wife’s infidelity were eating away at me, and I was careless. You can’t afford to be careless in battle. But the wound wasn’t actually as bad as it looked. The worst part was lying there with my dead comrades in the mud, crying, playing dead among the scattered limbs, waiting for the shooting to stop. That was when I decided. If I survived all this, by hook or by crook, I would kill the both of them.
‘Then I had an idea. One of the dead men, a corporal, was so badly shot-up as to be unrecognisable. We were about the same build, so right there, in the mud, I exchanged uniform and identity tag with him. After that it was easy. I was bandaged up and sent back to a hospital in England as Corporal Saunders, and everyone assumed Lieutenant Bewlay was dead. It was easy enough to sneak out of the hospital and come up here while I was convalescing. I found them at it. Would you believe it? When I walked in, they were actually doing it in my bed, making the beast with two backs.’
I tried to keep the image from my mind, but I couldn’t. I saw Lady Isabella with Dr Greaves, naked, thrashing on white bed sheets. I gritted my teeth. ‘What did you do?’
Lord Bewlay laughed. ‘Do you know, I don’t think they even recognised me. They probably thought I was a burglar at first. Or a ghost. I still had bandages on my face. Greaves went for one of the swords on the wall and came at me. I dodged him and went for the other. I’d had quite a bit more experience with the things than he had, so I was able to kill him quite easily.’
‘And Isabella?’
‘I wasn’t going to kill her, witch though she was. I thought I was a gentleman, you see, that I would draw the line at killing a woman and take whatever punishment was meted out to me.’
‘What changed your mind?’
Lord Bewlay paused, then said, ‘She cradled his body in her arms and kissed his lips. Kissed him as a lover would, you understand. The next thing I knew, she was dead, my sword thrust right through her breast and stuck in the floorboards.’
‘My God.’ I felt a chill all down my spine. ‘Isabella.’
‘I cleaned up behind me, put the bodies in the well, sealed it up, returned to the hospital, then went back to France to carry on with the war. That would have been November, 1916. I didn’t care whether I lived or died. But dammit if I didn’t get wounded again. I decided this was the opportunity to put an end to Corporal Saunders once and for all, but I wasn’t certain how to bring back Lieutenant Bewlay. In the end, it didn’t matter. I passed out in a ditch from loss of blood. I woke up in a bed in a French farmhouse with Marianne gazing down on me, and my life was transformed from that moment. When I opened my eyes, I truly thought I was in heaven. I stayed there for two years, and when I wandered back home after the war was over, I simply told everyone I had lost my identity and my memory, which both came back slowly, with the right treatment. Nobody even asked about my identification. Perhaps they hadn’t found Corporal Saunders’ body. Anyway, there were no repercussions. I got a hero’s welcome. The rest you know.’
‘Did no one ever wonder what had happened to your wife and Dr Greaves?’
‘Everyone assumed they had run off together, gone to Canada or Australia or some such far-flung outpost.’
‘What about Jack’s song?’
‘Metcalfe must have seen me coming from the manor that night, around the time they disappeared. He couldn’t have known who he’d seen, or what I’d done, but he had imagination enough to make something of it. I probably made a rather terrifying figure in the moonlight. He knew about Greaves and Isabella – everyone did by then – and when there was no sign of them in the following days, I suppose it fit with one of the old songs he had in his mind. Some avenging demon, or some such rubbish. In an odd sort of way, he got it right, didn’t he? I mean, my wife and this Greaves did have an affair, and I did kill them both. Metcalfe was no doubt also struck by the similarity in the names Greaves and Groves, and the idea of some nobody bedding the lord’s wife appealed to his warped sense of humour. But for the few who ever had to listen to it in the Black Heifer, it was just another folk song. As far as anyone knew, I hadn’t been in England since August, 1916. Corporal Saunders had been here, of course, but nobody knew that, or cared tuppence about him. After a decent interval, I was able to bring Marianne over, and we had many happy years together here. Sadly, we were not blessed with issue, but that was a small price to pay for all the happiness we had.’ He paused, then looked me in the eye again. ‘So what are you going to do now you know the truth? Tell the police?’
I shook my head, feeling well and truly as if someone had scooped out my insides and replaced them with jelly. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘There doesn’t seem much point, does there? But Isabella …’
‘Isabella was an enchantress and a whore. She certainly worked her spell on you. I know all about the messages.’
It had taken me close to forty-five years to see the significance of what I had done that summer, and even then the realisation had come only indirectly, through names linked in a variant of a folk song. But whether I had been aware of it or not, I had played my part, however small, in the tragedy that had unfolded at Swainsdale Manor, in the deaths of the woman I had loved and the damaged young man who had been kind and understanding towards me.
‘I don’t think you’ll be seeing or hearing from me again,’ I said, and got up to leave. My feet felt heavy, my legs bound in irons, my heart like molten lead. I walked out of the room and out of the manor, back into the garden, where I stood for a moment leaning on one of the marble columns the way Isabella had done that first time I saw her.
I walked around the pond to the edge of the woods and looked for the circle of wood that covered the old well. It was no longer there, or at least I couldn’t see it. When I found the spot where I remembered the well had been, I stamped with my foot and thought I sensed a hollowness beneath.
There were no garden implements nearby, so I grabbed at the sods and pulled them up one by one with my bare hands, slowly revealing the cover. I grasped the metal ring and tugged with all my might. It was heavy and had been stuck in place for a long time. The sweat broke out on my brow, under my arms, trickled down my back. My heart pounded. And still I pulled. Finally, it budged. An inch. Two inches. More. Then it came away, and with both hands I was able to lift it up.
The well wasn’t very deep, and it had dried up over the years. The sun was still bright, and a beam of light illuminated the bottom. Even though Lord Bewlay had told me what I would find there, I gasped when I saw the latticework of entangled bones.
I stood there for I don’t know how long before I heard the sound of the shotgun blast from the house. Frightened birds flew from their shade among the leafy branches.
I made to go back, but I could only stand rooted to the spot by the well, staring at the bones, the sweat drying on my skin. What could I do? I knew it was partly my fault for stirring up such old feelings, and I knew that Lord Bewlay was right about Isabella. She had used a vulnerable young boy callously to aid her in deceiving and betraying her husband. But knowing that didn’t stop me from feeling a great weight of sadness and loss
descend as I remembered the beautiful young woman so full of life and vitality, her smiles, her laughter, and the touch of her finger against my lips.
I looked at the bones again. I couldn’t tell whether Isabella was on the top, but I hoped so.
‘A grave, a grave,’ Lord Bewlay cried, ‘to put these lovers in.
But lay my lady on the upper hand, she was the chiefest of her kin.’
NIGHT NURSE
Cath Staincliffe
Cath Staincliffe is the author of the Sal Kilkenny private eye stories and creator and scriptwriter of Blue Murder, ITV’s detective drama starring Caroline Quentin as DCI Janine Lewis. She writes the Scott & Bailey books, based on the ITV1 police series. Her stand-alone titles, starting with The Kindest Thing, often focus on topical moral dilemmas. She has also written for radio.
Joan’s research was always impeccable. After all, it wouldn’t do to be going off half-cocked; not when someone’s life was on the line.
She trusted her instincts, mind. Instincts were underrated these days. Talked of like so much mumbo-jumbo, on a par with homeopathy and crystal healing. Whereas Joan knew, over twenty-eight years of working with the sick and the halt and the lame, that people’s instincts were usually spot on.
For example, those close to death could feel it coming, their family too, though they might not admit it. But there was a collective reaction. For some a drawing back in preparation for letting go. For others, those with issues – a buzz-word Joan loathed but was bandied around by everyone these days. Issues, as far as Joan was concerned, meant offspring or the unsavoury by-products of medical conditions; issues were new sets of stamps or copies of magazines. Joan preferred the term unfinished business or scores to settle, troubled waters – for those people there was a frantic often unseemly last bid to get closer.
Instinct was normal and natural, we’re animals after all, so much blood and bone and hair and we’ve survived by our instincts for thousands of years. It was when you ignored your instinct that the trouble started. Like the time she’d been offered a lift home by one of the junior registrars. A filthy night, rain like stair rods and a mix of coal dust and sewage scenting the air. Her, soaked to the skin. But there was something about him, more than the curl of his smile and the hard brightness in his eyes, something like a smell coming off him that made Joan’s flesh crawl and her stomach turn over. She’d said, ‘No, thank you very much,’ and walked instead. Her skin white as tripe by the time she got back and had peeled off her clothes. Nine years later, a consultant by then, he’d been charged with sexual assault, found guilty and struck off.
As a rule, her antennae started twitching at visiting time. 2 to 4 p.m. and 6 to 8. That was when she first observed the couple at play, as it were. He’d have come up from Emergency, fast-tracked for surgery or booked in after a GP referral and outpatient tests.
Body language told her most of the story, the tableau of tension: the lowered gaze and anxious glances, fretful hands, the bitter twist of his mouth, the clenched knuckles.
Joan added sound to this, tending to one of the other patients behind the curtains, always amazed at how out-of-sight really was out-of-mind. It wasn’t strictly necessary to make out the actual words because the rhythm and tone, the cadence and the silences offered enough to add weight to her suspicion. Variations on a symphony she’d grown up hearing, could have scored herself, choreographed, sung the theme tune. Nevertheless, something verbal was always a helpful contribution to the evidence. The put-downs, the insults, the veiled threats: Why on earth did you park there? Good God, woman, I didn’t mean that book. The stone cold cruelty: Christ, you’re so bloody dim, they won’t operate until I’ve seen the anaesthetist. The humourless laugh more like a bark and the wife’s answering giggle or half sob, breathy, fearful or unnaturally calm. Her whispered attempts to placate: I’m sorry. Yes, of course, love.
The one before last had been Pakistani, they talked English but not to each other, so Joan couldn’t make out what they were saying though everything else fit and her intuition had proved correct.
But Joan didn’t rely solely on her instincts.
And she was cautious; if there was any doubt about it, what she thought of as her diagnosis, then she stayed her hand and kept the peace. The monitoring phase continued as long as was necessary. Getting the lay of the land. She always made a further check and for that she’d developed a couple of little tricks that worked every time.
Joan would chat to the husband, who was charm personified to all but his other half. Simple enough to become his favourite nurse and glean a little personal information. Heather? That’s a lovely name, your age is she? Just thinking of afterwards, the rehab, if she’ll be able to cope. Younger? Two years. No impairments? Grand – should be fine.
Then the star sign ruse. Perusing the horoscopes when the wife next visited. ‘Money in the air from a surprising source.’ Oooh, I like that one. What’s yours, Heather? No, let me guess – Taurus? And when the reply came, whether it was, Yes! Taurus, or, No, Pisces/Capricorn/Libra, Joan would widen her eyes and laugh aloud, Same as me! I’m the tenth. No one could resist giving their own date, least they hadn’t yet, and Joan would read out that day’s horoscope and then get back to work.
Armed with both name and date of birth she would wait until, in the depth of a night shift, she could check the wife’s admission records.
She had been wrong once. A painfully shy young woman married to a much older man. The husband had actually slapped his wife’s face when he thought no one was looking. The young woman had gone beet red and blinked back tears. Joan had checked her out but found nothing, no A&E visits, no pattern of accidents and falls. It didn’t mean it wasn’t happening but Joan held her fire that time. Checks and balances. She had to be ninety-nine percent certain.
The latest one – Heather, had been in and out like a yo-yo. The last two admissions for broken bones.
A 20-bed ward, five four-bed bays. Male cardio-surgical. Men whose hearts were bursting, leaking, obstructed, engorged. Men whose hearts were broken and among them, here and there, men whose hearts were rotten to the core.
Joan did a revolving pattern of earlies, lates and nights. Nights were when she undertook her missions. She’d missed one candidate when a run of norovirus had buggered up staffing levels and shoved her back onto days. That man had left after his double by-pass to return to the marital home.
Unlike the rest.
This last one was only her sixth, in fifteen years, so it wasn’t like she was running amok, dishing out treatment willy-nilly. The post-op period was ideal, the immune system weakened by the procedure, and the vagaries of individual recuperation subject to wide variation which provided ample camouflage. With almost thirty years’ experience to draw on Joan had a battery of weapons at her disposal: drugs withheld or increased, fluid introduced into the respiratory system, air into the blood, vital signs misreported, alarm systems disconnected and reactivated at the appropriate times. A jot of adrenaline or a tot of insulin, a blast of morphine, a tube pinched, a pillow judiciously applied.
Of course it was a shock for the wife left behind: the risks associated with surgery were never really believed, better to focus on the big, positive percentages. And at first the women were at sea, like they’d had their legs kicked out from underneath them – metaphorically this time.
It had been the same with Joan’s mother, at a loss without him there. Frozen. Uncertain how to act, how to be, without her lord and master, his nibs. A crude beginning for Joan, shoving him down the cellar steps as he swayed at the top, about to go fetch another pint of homebrew. Satisfied that the crack to his skull would be the death of him, if left unattended, and with her mother off on a church outing, Joan went to the market on Grey Mare Lane. She took her time, browsing, chatting, cup of tea and a barm cake in Bea’s Cosy Caff. Came back and discovered him unresponsive, no pulse (she was in her first year of nurse training) and dutifully rang the ambulance.
For her mum, as for the
later women, the relief, the sweet, dizzying sense of escape, of freedom, only came later. As they learned to be at home in their own skin, in their own homes. When they could feel carpet beneath the soles of their feet, or grass or sand, in place of eggshells. When they could sleep without each sense attuned to the possibility of attack: the hand at the neck, the fist in the face, the obscenities showering down in a spray of spittle signalling start of play.
There was a period of transition, a need for rehabilitation and Joan considered it her responsibility to help with this. Using her role as carer to offer balm and comfort: It’s never easy but perhaps you’d like to come along for a cuppa one day, there’s a couple of us meet at the café in the garden centre. Or a trip to the theatre, or an afternoon shopping. Not Selfridges’s, mind, not on my wage. As new found friend edging them slowly back into the big, wide world, recommending book groups and local history societies, volunteering and WEA classes, helping run a fund-raising raffle for the women’s refuge. Never prying, never needing to know but always a good listener.
Joan had fretted about how to support the Pakistani widow, had called round for tea a couple of times but then the woman had explained that she was going to Birmingham, where her brother’s family would take her in. She seemed excited at the prospect.
The widows blossomed in time, the chill and terror of their marriage replaced by the comfort of female friendships and the delights of small and selfish pleasures. Gradually Joan took a back seat as they found their feet. Over the years her reward had been to hear those simple words: New lease of life; A teenager again; I don’t miss him at all, if I’m honest; Feel like a new woman.
Today they’d a fresh admission. Cardiac arrest at home, still on a ventilator. Ashen colour. Judging by the wife’s face he’d been using her as a punch bag when his ticker gave out. Bruises fresh and ripe as plums. ‘He knocked into me when he fell,’ the wife said, to anyone who’d listen. ‘I should have got out of the way.’ An apologetic titter after every comment, eyes stark as a head-lit rabbit.
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