The Widow's Confession

by Sophia Tobin

  ‘You must have something to eat,’ said Delphine, trying not to laugh at the self-administration of smelling salts. She put her basket down and unwrapped the sandwiches they had planned to have for lunch, then produced an earthenware flask of ginger beer which Martha had provided for them. She glanced at Alba. ‘The tide is not dangerously close yet; there is no need to panic.’

  Alba turned away, as though she had been scolded.

  The woman needed no further encouragement. She began to eat – at first slowly, but soon quickly and heartily, barely managing to stifle a burp when she took a gulp of the beer. Julia had moved off to the water’s edge, and Delphine thought she saw her turn away to hide a smile.

  ‘Are you lodging nearby?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ said the woman. ‘We are at the Albion Hotel, near Main Bay. We came too far – Alba wished so much to see the Foreland.’

  ‘It is all my fault,’ said Alba, turning back to them abruptly, obviously having been listening. ‘I am so sorry, Aunt. And to think I could have placed you in danger.’

  ‘I have forgotten my manners,’ said the woman. ‘My name is Miss Waring, and this is Miss Albertine Peters, my niece.’

  ‘I am pleased to make your acquaintance,’ said Delphine.

  ‘Are you . . . Americans?’ Miss Waring said, having taken a mouthful of cheese.

  ‘We are,’ Delphine said, feeling her expression harden. ‘How clever of you to know the accent.’

  ‘I think it delightful,’ Miss Waring said, and real pleasure seemed to light up her little hazel eyes. ‘I knew an American man once, in London. He was a very jolly fellow. Entertaining. He went back there. It was a shame for all of us.’

  ‘Oh, Aunt,’ said Alba. Delphine could not work out if she was speaking in exasperation or affection. Having recovered from the shock of her aunt being ill, her face had returned to that neutral, expressionless beauty which had so struck Delphine. The perfect artist’s model, she thought, an empty canvas, waiting for a story to be painted upon it.

  Suddenly, the aunt’s pleasure faded to fear. ‘Alba, my dear,’ she said. ‘What if Mr Brown comes? He will expect to see us up on the cliffs.’

  ‘He did not come when he was supposed to,’ said Alba. ‘Traitorous man. We sat there for a long time. He said he would be but half an hour.’ Delphine had to suppress a smile at her dramatic tone.

  ‘I am here to convalesce,’ explained Miss Waring, addressing Delphine. ‘I have a nervous complaint. The air has been doing me good, until the unfortunate events of the last few days, which have unsettled me. Well, we need not speak of it. Alba has come to join me and be my companion for the summer. She knows the place a little, and we have visited with our friends at Northdown House. You love that place, don’t you, my dear? But I am afraid I am a wearisome companion, and being in the hotel suits me a little better. The young have such energy. My poor girl.’

  ‘I am grateful to be here,’ said Alba stiffly, and she kicked hard into the sand, like a recalcitrant child. Miss Waring tutted under her breath. Delphine noticed that Alba was wearing thin shoes, not the heavy strong boots needed for such walking.

  ‘The tide is coming in,’ said Julia, as Miss Waring finished the sandwiches. ‘We should think of making our way up to the cliffs. Someone should go and wait for this Mr Brown, just in case he comes.’

  ‘Alba – that is, Miss Albertine – must stay with me,’ said Miss Waring. There was something definite about the turn of her mouth when she said the words.

  ‘I will go up,’ said Delphine, rising and brushing off her skirts. ‘What does this Mr Brown look like? I do not wish to stare and wave at every man I see.’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Miss Waring with a hint of severity. ‘He is a rough-looking man, and wears a very old straw hat. He has thick black whiskers; is short, but stout and strong. His pony is a dappled grey.’

  ‘That is quite enough to be going on with,’ said Delphine, impressed by her powers of observation. And with a nod at Julia, she turned and made her way up the steep slope with its uneven footholds cut from the chalk, wondering how on earth they would get the woman up there.

  Delphine stood waiting for some time.

  Finally, coming from the opposite direction of town, she saw a black dot moving along the road, the shape of a horse and cart. It was approaching in a slow, almost leisurely fashion, and she had to fight the impulse to shout and wave. Impatience was always a sin of mine, she thought. It is what damned me, really. So by strength of will alone she stayed rooted to the spot, frowning, until she saw with grim satisfaction a stout man wearing a straw hat, driving a dappled grey pony.

  ‘Mr Brown!’ she said, as he pulled up.

  ‘Yeah?’ he grunted. ‘Who’s asking?’

  ‘Your patroness, Miss Waring,’ she said tartly. ‘She has been waiting for you for several hours.’

  He got down from his post, held his pony’s head protectively. The pony laid her ears back. Delphine longed for the animal to butt at him, perhaps even give him a bite, for he fixed her with an insolent glare.

  ‘I never promised anythin’,’ he said. ‘I said I had business to do at Northdown, and then I’d be back.’

  She hardly knew why, but Delphine hated him in that moment; and the feeling came upon her so suddenly and completely that it left her silent. Was it the confident sensuality in his gaze, she wondered later, that reminded her of the past, and sparked her hostility?

  ‘Here they are,’ he said. ‘Just in time.’

  They had made it up the cliff: Julia, Miss Waring and Alba, the two women supporting the matron. At the sight of the man, Alba’s face transformed with dislike, and Delphine felt a bond with her.

  ‘You naughty man!’ Alba said. ‘You did not come to collect us, so I took my aunt down to see if the coastal walk would be easier on the sand, and we could well have been stranded if these ladies had not come to help us.’

  ‘Coastal walk easier on the sand?’ said the man, with a snort of contempt. ‘What a notion. Wherever did you get that from, miss? If you’d just stayed up here there would have been no problem at all. You’re lucky you didn’t get in trouble down there. That’s the smugglers’ bay, that is, and I wonder you weren’t chased by their ghosts. And now the bay has more ghosts . . .’

  ‘Do not frighten her,’ said Miss Waring rather stiffly, but with none of the displeasure Delphine had imagined she would unleash. ‘You are here now, so help me up, if you please. We wish to go home and have a cup of tea.’

  The man rolled his eyes but heaved the lady up, Julia supporting her elbow. Alba stayed below, watching anxiously, her arms wrapped around herself. When the man went to hand her up – with a lascivious glint in his eye – she turned her back on him and curtseyed to Delphine and Julia. ‘Thank you for your assistance, Mrs Beck, Miss Mardell,’ she said. ‘We are staying at the Albion Hotel, and usually take tea there every morning and afternoon. I hope we meet in happier circumstances during your stay in Broadstairs.’

  ‘As do we,’ Delphine said. ‘We are at Victory Cottage.’

  But Alba was already leaping up into the cart, snatching her hand away from Mr Brown as she settled next to her aunt. ‘Adieu,’ she said. Mr Brown snapped his whip with a nasty smile and they set off.

  Julia and Delphine stood on the clifftop and waited until the cart had rattled out of sight. Julia looked at Delphine. ‘Adieu indeed,’ she said. ‘And why on earth did you tell her our address?’

  ‘Did you not think her extraordinary?’ asked Delphine. ‘I saw her at church. She will be fending off proposals as soon as the summer season begins.’

  ‘I am no judge of what men think of as beautiful,’ said Julia. ‘Everyone agreed that my life had been ruined by being born with such a face as this. But as a child, when I looked in the glass, I could never bring myself to be ashamed of it. Now, shall we go to Kingsgate – at last?’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  After our meeting with Alba, the old fear and bitterness came upon me a
gain, as though the past was on my heels. I kept myself from the fresh cool air of morning and stayed inside my parlour, trapped inside my tightly-laced corset and the layers of my dress, waiting for the heat of the day to reveal itself. As the days passed, the heat deepened into that kind of warmth which is held in rock and sand as afternoon passes into evening. It was so hot that Martha had to grate horseradish into the milk to keep it fresh, and leave saucers of beer on the floor at night to trap the cockroaches. And as the sun rose in the sky, I lay on the faded embroidery of the sofa in our parlour and thought of the past, in the hope that thinking of it might inure me to it, but it had never lost its grip on me, and the memory of it still made my heart beat hard in my chest.

  Then came the first summons from Mrs Quillian.

  Mrs Quillian showed her character the next week, in a flurry of notes delivered to the people she had met, with promises of an excursion and a picnic: ‘cold hock, salty ham, and fresh bread warm from the bakehouse’, were the words she used. Delphine smiled at that, liking the fact that she – unlike so many women – did not keep her bread until it was starting to stale. She supposed the old lady was from that generation where pleasure was not so frowned upon. Dear ladies, bring shade from the sun, she had written, as if there was any doubt in the matter. The group’s rallying place was the Albion Hotel. Delphine wrote and said they would go, surprising herself as well as Julia with the wish to, but on the morning of the picnic her enthusiasm faded. She dressed in her most stifling dress of black stuff, and twined her hair choker around her white neck.

  They waited in the saloon of the Albion. Delphine saw Mr Benedict across the room, and knew from his movements that he was trying to catch her eye, so she gazed around her, as though absorbed in the décor. A large clock, with crystal pillars either side of its ornate face, ticked on a high shelf, and she pointed it out to Julia.

  ‘A fine piece, don’t you think?’ Delphine said, nodding towards it. Their grandfather had been a connoisseur of such things; the family’s Fifth Avenue house stuffed with every kind of objet d’art. ‘I wonder how much it cost.’

  Julia glanced over her shoulder then turned back to Delphine. ‘You have a better eye than me,’ she said. ‘And I wish you would not mention the price of everything, as though we are in trade. You know how the English dislike it.’

  ‘You must forgive me if money concerns me,’ said Delphine tightly.

  ‘We are in a fix, aren’t we?’ said Julia. ‘I knew you were keeping something from me.’

  ‘Hush,’ said Delphine. Mr Benedict was striding towards them.

  He bowed low. ‘Mrs Beck. Will you permit me to join your carriage? I very much wish to discuss painting with you; our first stop will be a viewpoint I think you will like.’

  ‘I would not wish to disrupt Mrs Quillian’s plans,’ said Delphine.

  ‘Nor I, of course. Ah, see how poor Gorsey produces this fêted picnic.’ Mr Gorsey and his daughter Polly were labouring with a heavy hamper. Benedict came closer to her, and Delphine was aware that Julia had stepped away to speak to Mrs Quillian, their words blending into the mêlée of the other voices in the room. ‘Are you well?’ he said, in a low voice, so close that she felt the warmth of his slightly sour breath. ‘We have not had a moment to speak of what we both saw on the beach. I was unprepared for the shock of it. Strange, when death is all around us, to be so shocked by something.’

  ‘Not strange,’ said Delphine. ‘Natural. But I do not see any reason to speak of what we saw. As Mr Hallam says, she is with God now. We should do our best to forget what we have seen.’

  In truth, she did wish to speak, but not to Benedict. She could not bring herself to trust him, not even when his face, in the light, looked to be all goodness and openness. She felt no hint of the confidence she had felt even on her first meeting with Mr Steele. And yet – she knew that all confidence in a person was dangerous; trust was not a word she favoured. Mr Benedict, Mr Hallam, even Mr Steele – they were all enemies waiting to hatch. The dead girl’s vulnerable body, lying on the sand, had woken some deep pain in her. Her normal calmness had not reasserted itself; instead she found, reawakened, her bitter distrust of the world which had sprung into life one distant week in New York. And, not for the first time, she wondered if Julia carried that in her too – a distrust so deep it felt like a wound.

  ‘Forget it?’ Mr Benedict was echoing her words, and even her tone, and in his sudden, quiet-voiced anger she knew that she was right not to trust him – for so quickly, wildness was returning to his eyes. ‘How we can forget what we have seen? What we have experienced, together? Do you not feel fellowship between us, having been through that?’

  ‘I do not know what game you are trying to play, sir,’ she said, matching his low tone with her own. ‘But if you attempt to use a dead child to establish some connection with me, then I will think it very poor of you. We are at Mrs Quillian’s excursion; let us travel lightly, and leave off our thoughts of sorrow. But I beg of you, do not think me any more connected to you than,’ she glanced at the grumpy landlord, ‘Mr Gorsey, or Dr Crisp – or Mr Steele.’

  She then stepped away, keeping her face averted so he would know not to speak to her again, and so she would not be forced to look at him. She began to speak to Julia and saw that Alba, standing next to her aunt, who appeared to be chattering to the air, was gazing at her: the same gaze she had seen at the church, but this time infused with a piercing curiosity.

  ‘Mrs Beck?’ It was Mr Steele, his smile one of unaffected pleasure. ‘I am glad to see you have been able to join the excursion – and you, Miss Mardell, may I say what a pleasure it is to see you?’ He sought a smile from Julia, and gained one, and Delphine saw that her cousin was both flattered and puzzled by his attention, a blush rising in her face.

  There were two carriages and Delphine was relieved when she found that Mr Benedict had been placed in the second carriage, and she in the first. They travelled slowly, the clopping of the horses’ hooves languorous, as though they were sleepy, and Delphine noted as they went that the small town was fuller than she had seen it. Many of those who walked were grandly dressed; now and then an invalid passed, pushed in a chair, or a little crowd of children with straw hats and raised voices, freed by the seaside. Marchesi’s, the confectioners, was already busy. They passed a line of donkeys being led down towards the beach, a swinging little line with doleful eyes and twitching ears.

  The carriages stopped first at the southern tip of Main Bay. The ladies got down, opening their parasols, and took a turn in the field at the edge of the cliff. Mrs Quillian told them that Mr Benedict had asked for the stop, for he often painted here, and considered it the perfect viewpoint of the town.

  It was the spot Delphine had stood at on her second day in the town. It was the natural curve of the bay that she loved, as if it was carved out of the cliffs by the water. She tried to fix it in her mind: the sea, stretching out over the horizon to France, was formed from discrete layers of colour. Anyone would forgive the sweep of the watercolourist’s brush in trying to portray it, but you would have to be here to really believe it: hold up the sketch and compare it to the skyline and its stripes of blue, and grey and green. The pattern of the waves could be seen even at this distance, the dance and sparkle of sunlight on water, the turning over of a wave, chasing away the golden sunlight temporarily as it smoothed out its place on the shore.

  There was a scattering of people below, and some bathing machines parked near the water. All as if that dead girl was never there, thought Delphine. She heard the sound of children’s voices, faint screams here and there of delight and rage, and the way in which the little ones seemed to be in cautious pursuit of the sea, daring to come up to the edge of it, then swiftly retreating, then returning in a game of which they never tired. But more than that, she was entranced by the constant movement of the sea, unchangeable, unceasing. From this distance it seemed gentle, yet she knew it was an unstoppable force, carrying everything in its wake. Carryin
g a body as easily as it carried pebbles and seaweed. She saw the churning of the water around the pier, its endless turning and overturning.

  Julia had walked up alongside her, her veil draped over her face.

  ‘I am trying to memorize it,’ said Delphine. ‘It’s beautiful, but cruel.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I can’t help thinking – remove us all, and the sea would still be here. Its delicate shades of colour, the light playing on the water.’ She did not add that in each wave she saw the merciless repetition of nature; that in every child’s scream of delight, she imagined another kind of scream, and saw the still face of the dead girl.

  ‘You seem troubled,’ said Julia gently, then Delphine heard the smile in her voice as she added, ‘Now, look at that. Surely that chases the melancholy away.’

  She was pointing to a young seagull, its wings outstretched, riding the currents of air beside the cliff. It did not have the confidence of an older bird, but wavered a little now and then as it passed them. Despite its yellow eyes and long beak it was half-grown, its downy cream-coloured breast flecked through with baby grey. Delphine had been observing the seagulls, and she loved this stage most of all – its hesitant serenity, each day bringing a greater mastery of its skills. Julia herself preferred the bleating, terrified babies with their iron-grey plumage, constantly berating their mothers with their wailing, grating calls.

  ‘We shall be back in the carriages in a moment or two,’ said Julia. ‘Mrs Quillian has decided this is no place for a picnic. It is not quiet enough, and she does not wish us to be disturbed by other sightseers, or musicians, or donkeys.’ She could not help a tiny snort of laughter. ‘We will continue a little way up the coast, to Dumpton Gap, where the air is apparently just as bracing but the beach less populated. There is talk of shell-collecting after our picnic.’ She glanced back over her shoulder. ‘I know I wished to have nothing to do with anyone, but I think we will find this excursion amusing in its way. Poor Miss Waring is trying hard to guard her niece from the men, as if they were ravaging beasts. No one is worried about us.’