The Mysterious Affair at Castaway House

by Lam, Stephanie

  ‘Oh.’ I thought of her up-to-the-minute clothes, her London haircut; not funded by Johnny after all. ‘I see.’

  ‘Please don’t think any worse of me.’ Her hand landed on mine, clasping it. ‘I mean, I haven’t got any money. It’s all Granny’s.’

  ‘Why would I think worse of you?’ I folded her warm, dry fingers into my palm.

  ‘I don’t know.’ She bowed her head. ‘Maybe you’d think I was some sort of spoiled little rich girl.’

  ‘So what?’ I laughed. ‘So what?’

  She looked up at me. ‘I don’t want you to despise me, Rosie.’

  I put my other hand to her forehead and smoothed away the crease at her brow. ‘Of course I don’t despise you.’ I lifted her chin, and my stomach crumpled as I leaned forwards and kissed her.

  At first she gasped, and then I felt her bones relax and she kissed me back. I pressed myself into her. Her lips parted, and as my tongue found hers a jolt of electricity pierced me from mouth to groin.

  Finally, she pulled back from me. ‘I’ve got to go,’ she murmured, pushing herself up to standing, brushing herself down.

  ‘What about tea?’ I said, still dizzy with her.

  ‘No time. Sorry.’ She grabbed her cape and bag from the kitchen chair. ‘I’ll see you … see you soon.’

  ‘Tomorrow.’ I smiled up at her. ‘The party, remember?’

  She hesitated by the door. ‘What? Oh yes. The party.’ She swallowed, nodded a goodbye and left the room. I heard her footsteps above my head, running up to the top-floor flat.

  I stayed where I was for quite a while, with Robert Carver over my head and the taste of Star on my lips. Finally, I pushed myself upright on cramped feet and went into the bedroom. The clouds were low in the sky, and the objects in the room had taken on a submerged look.

  I drew all the curtains and got undressed, even though it was only mid-afternoon. I climbed under the covers and sank back into the memory of Star’s lips giving under mine, her body burning heat as we’d kissed.

  I pulled her into bed with me now, stripped her of her dress and her underwear, and wrapped my arms around her back as she lay on top of me, resting on her elbows, smiling down, our noses touching.

  I reached underneath my nightdress and crawled fingers up my legs towards the place at the top. I caressed myself slowly, gently, and a warmth coursed through my body. I continued, firmer now, again and again and again until with a shudder and a muffled cry my back arched, my head pressing into the pillow and stars juddering up my spine.

  Afterwards, I lay in a happy glow of contentment, the late-appearing sun sending a bleak yellow wash over the edge of the curtains. I thought of Star again, tenderly this time, with a shiver of anticipation for the party tomorrow.

  Somehow, my thoughts travelled to her grandmother Clara, and the young woman Dockie had known. Dark hair and red lips, he had said, a memory so strong it could break through a thick wall of years. I wondered what she had been like, and how similar she was to her granddaughter, who had me dancing on the tip of her finger, again and again and again.

  10

  1924

  I sat squashed into the side of the motor car. Beside me, volumes of skirt crushed my trousers, and occasionally I felt a hand flutter close to my thigh. The air around me was thick with perfume, despite the roof being pulled down, and bubbling female chatter crowded out my thoughts.

  ‘How are you there, poor man?’ said the girl on the fold-down seat opposite me. ‘Must be terrible having to put up with all us females.’

  The woman beside me, she of the wandering hand, nudged me hard in my side. ‘I’m sure he loves every second of it, don’t you, Mr Carver?’ She laughed loud and hard, snorting like a horse.

  ‘I’m fine, thank you,’ was all the reply I had left in me, and even that went unnoticed in the general brouhaha. I wondered, yet again, why I was here.

  I’d had a troubled night’s sleep, my mind going over the tale Agnes had told me in the servants’ hall. The story of the servant girl Gina’s fate had clearly been kept from the rest of my family, or surely I would have heard it earlier. Quite apart from the taint of suicide that would linger over the house, there was also the question of who had fathered the baby that had driven her to it.

  I did not like to imagine the answer to that question, but the idea of it refused to let me go. It had rolled like a penny round my brain as I lay in bed and watched the moonlight throwing patterns on the ceiling. I wondered also about Agnes in the basement, hunched in that rocking chair, undoubtedly failing to sleep. I felt duty-bound to at least attempt to help her by forging some sort of conversation with Mrs Bray, and it was the thought of this that drove me to get out of bed, dry-mouthed and hungover, pack my sketchbook, brushes and newly bought tin of watercolours, and join my cousin’s wife in the dining room for breakfast.

  ‘I’m surprised to see you,’ she said, folding out her newspaper. I helped myself to toast and sat as gently as I could at the table. ‘I heard you went off carousing with my husband last night.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have missed this for the world,’ I croaked, feeling too hellish to think about my disgraceful – in every sense of the word – behaviour with those girls last night.

  I attempted to bring up the subject of Agnes, but the girl herself was toing and froing with the breakfast dishes, and clearly any private talk was impossible. I decided that I would discuss the problem on the journey, as I expected the pair of us to be driven in the Brays’ motor car, a shiny beast of a thing that Alec had already damaged when attempting to manoeuvre it himself. However, as we stood on the front step in the morning sunshine I saw a different one trundling round the corner.

  ‘Are we not using yours?’ I asked, turning to her in surprise.

  ‘Oh no. We like to save on petrol,’ she said, adjusting the tilt of her cloche hat on her head, as the car drew to a halt and a squeal of ladies looked out and hooted, ‘A man! So typical of Clara. Clara? Where are you? Come and explain yourself!’

  She smiled sweetly at them. ‘Oh, you don’t mind, do you? Mr Carver is my cousin, and he did beg to be allowed to join you all.’

  I looked at her askance, but she did not see me. The door opened and a large woman with a big face leaned out. ‘Well, if he begged!’ she said. ‘And in that case, Mr Carver, I absolutely insist you sit next to me. I’ll protect you from all these females.’

  I was already being pulled inside. ‘What about you?’ I said to Mrs Bray as I climbed in.

  ‘I’m taking the next one,’ she said sweetly, pointing to where another motor car was rolling up the hill. ‘Mrs Darling gets travel sickness and I’ve promised to hold her hand. See you there.’

  And so here I was, squashed into a corner of the upholstery, at the mercy of several ladies, my only male company the driver, who seemed to think it all rather amusing. The predatory woman with the large face and voice, whose name, appropriately, was Mrs Eagle, informed me that this was a ladies’ painting circle, to which men were rarely, if ever, admitted, and that Mrs Bray had done me a huge favour by permitting me access. ‘Although I expect you’re really one of the girls at heart, aren’t you?’ she said, jogging me in the ribs.

  Now I understood what Alec had meant by keeping my wits with me, and the mischief that had lain behind Mrs Bray’s offer to me last night. All about me, the conversation rattled at whipcrack speed, from the failings of the ladies’ servants to scandal about their neighbours’ children, from how simply divine was somebody’s wrap to a frankly disturbing conversation about politics which contained several sharp insights that would not have sounded out of place along with port and cigars round Dr Feathers’ dining table last night.

  I heard it all, and was made to feel fairly dizzy by it, so contented myself by watching the outlying suburbs of Helmstone fall away – new redbrick estates and then, behind them, bumpier roads, thicker trees, and our street became a country lane.

  We passed drays with carts, a ramshackle farm with chick
ens clucking from behind the gate and cows nibbling at the grass, and then through the village of Petwick, all charming stone cottages and dogs sleeping in the road, the walls bordered with poppies and cornflowers, butterflies darting in and out of the greenery, and I realized I had forgotten my human need for this, the simple smell of the countryside, the sight of green hills in the distance, the sense of being a small dot in a huge landscape.

  After Petwick we turned off the main road and headed down a rutted lane, overlooked by willow and ash trees. The ladies had not stopped talking the entire journey, and now, as the car rumbled to a gentle halt by a fence and stile, there was a general hullabaloo of surprise and excitement and ‘Ooh, are we here?’ from several of the ladies, as if they had not noticed one single thing throughout.

  Mrs Eagle, who appeared to be the organizing matron, hustled everybody out of the motor car with much more brio than was necessary.

  ‘Now then, ladies,’ she boomed, when we were all standing in patches of shade and sunlight, before winking at me, ‘and Mr Carver, of course, whom we could never mistake for a lady – and please take no offence, sir, that would never be my intention – we will be walking a quarter of a mile to our destination, and as we shall be there until two o’clock, please make sure you have everything that is yours. Especially luncheon!’ she roared, which produced a general round of giggling, although for the life of me I could not understand why.

  There was some twittering as the ladies ensured they had all their equipment, and Mrs Eagle then pointed her parasol at the stile and said, ‘Mr Carver will, I trust, be a gentleman and look away as we ladies traverse the stile in what I am sure will be an ungainly fashion, and I shall poke him with my umbrella if he doesn’t!’

  I smiled tightly at her, wondering why for the life of me I would want to watch Mrs Eagle climb over a stile.

  ‘Excuse me,’ piped up the youngest of the ladies, the daughter of one of the other matrons and a pale, sickly thing. ‘Will there be any – er – facilities at the place?’ She blushed bright red as she spoke and looked down.

  ‘My dear Constance, nature always provides,’ Mrs Eagle boomed. ‘Which means, you must go behind a tree and worry about the consequences later. Let’s be off !’

  I hung back, looking for the other motor car, and then decided that even when it arrived Mrs Bray would only spite me with some other witticism, and so I followed the ladies over the stile, having looked away first, and walked down a lane, the wood on one side, open meadow on the other. Spindly thistles clung to the outskirts of the wood, and bees charged about them, humming. After several minutes, we turned a corner and saw, through a clearing in the trees, a lake, which prompted much cries of ‘Ooh!’ from the ladies.

  Mrs Eagle stopped and turned. ‘Here is our muse for today,’ she intoned, flinging back her hand. ‘You may set up where you will, but this lake is well known for capturing a certain quality of light upon its surface, which I am sure will prove interesting to those of us who are determined scholars of the craft of luminescence, and in any case I should be very keen to see all of your results. Especially yours, Mr Carver!’

  I quavered silently, wondering what she would say when she beheld my amateurish work. Nevertheless, I soldiered on, determined they would think me the strong, silent type rather than the nervous, uncertain one.

  The ladies spent an inordinate age deciding where to set up their stations. It seemed of the utmost importance that each should be near their dearest friend, and they debated on the various spots around the lake at much length. I took the higher ground, at the top end of the lake, feeling more secure with the solid wood of trees at my back.

  I settled myself on to a tree stump and pulled out my sketchbook. The light here was, indeed, rather special, and the lake sang in turquoise, indigo, cobalt and all manner of blues, greens and greys. I thought I would have to paint something or else risk being mocked, and so got out my jar of water, my brushes, my paints, and, fearful at first, and then becoming bolder, sketched out the shape of the lake in pencil and began splashing on colour.

  ‘I believe this may be the best spot in the whole place,’ boomed Mrs Eagle, and I jumped. ‘I do beg your pardon, Mr Carver. I too am often so rapt in my work that I barely notice the sounding of the dinner gong.’

  She was thrashing her way through the undergrowth towards me, breathing heavily, her face pink. She stopped dramatically, holding on to the trunk of a tree for support. ‘Now, are you one of those who refuse to let others see a work in progress? I quite understand if you are of the sensitive disposition. I, of course, welcome any number of viewings, but we can’t all be as hardy as me, can we now?’

  ‘No, no,’ I said. ‘It’s quite all right.’ I held up the page to her, which she took, holding it at arm’s length as she surveyed it, allowing herself a lengthy pause in which to do so.

  ‘That’s really getting there,’ she said eventually. ‘I especially like the use of your pure colours.’ She pointed, her finger perilously close to the still-wet paint.

  ‘I mixed them,’ I said. ‘Aquamarine and turquoise.’

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘Is that so? I wonder you bothered. Still, a marvellous effort, Mr Carver, and I’m sure it has great potential.’ She handed the book back to me. ‘Also, I wanted to let you know that in general we stop for luncheon at one o’clock to let the paint dry. Not that you’re obliged to, by any means, but I do encourage it, because I know that when one is creating Art the hours fly by, and one must eat.’

  ‘One must,’ I echoed, looking down at the lady artists gathered about the lake. Frail young Constance was sketching on a pad, sitting on an upturned log beside her mother, who was wearing pince-nez and peering very intently at her work. Even from this height, I heard the sound of the ladies’ chatter, and wondered how they would get anything painted if they didn’t stop talking. I noticed that the lakeside was, in fact, rather busy. ‘Have the others arrived?’ I asked Mrs Eagle.

  ‘A while ago now, Mr Carver,’ she said, chortling. ‘You have forgotten the time. It’s nearly midday.’

  ‘Is it?’ I scanned the lakeside but saw no sign of Mrs Bray. ‘Funny how the time goes.’

  ‘Indeed.’ She plunged on past me, over bracken and daisy, thundering, ‘Clara! How are you faring, my dear?’

  I whipped my head about, peering through the trees, but saw nothing except Mrs Eagle’s flowered behind. She must have positioned herself exactly so she was invisible to me. I wondered why this bothered me so much. Anyhow, what did it all matter? She barely gave me a thought, and I – I had no real idea as to why I was here.

  The leaves rustled again, although this time I was prepared. I laid down my brush and waited for the re-arrival of Mrs Eagle on her way back to the lakeside. Instead, Mrs Bray came through the trees towards me, a satchel over one shoulder.

  She stopped beside me. ‘Mrs Eagle,’ she said, ‘has the sensitivity of a rhino.’

  I was so stunned that she had spoken to me as if we were not mortal enemies that I almost forgot to reply. I stuttered out, ‘I – I rather think you’re doing the rhino a disservice there.’

  She made a snorting sound, which may have been a laugh or may not. ‘Completely put me off,’ she said. ‘Thought I may as well have lunch now.’

  And before I had time to comprehend the enormity of this overture, she was striding past me, down to the water’s edge, seating herself on a tree stump overlooking the lake.

  I frowned at her, then went to put my brushes into my water jar, spilling water and dropping a brush on to the scratchy ground as I did so. I then hunted for my sandwich tin, and by the time I joined her by the lake she was eating her lunch and looking quite as if she had ceased to recall my existence.

  I sat on a log and opened the tin, wondering how on earth the pair of us were going to make civil conversation.

  ‘They’re fish paste,’ supplied Mrs Bray. ‘Mrs Pennyworth never makes marvellously original sandwiches, but they could be worse.’

  �
�They’re delicious,’ I murmured, ready to spar if sparring were needed.

  She looked out across the lake. Her forehead and fringe were caught in a glimmer of sunlight; they shone in brilliant contrasts. ‘When I saw you on the front step of Castaway this morning, you looked as if you were facing the firing squad.’

  I bit into my sandwich. ‘I suppose that pleased you.’

  She twisted her mouth into a smile. ‘Now why on earth would you think that, Mr Carver?’

  ‘Just a hunch,’ I said shortly.

  She deigned not to answer, and we sat facing the shimmering lake in the perfect silence with which we often shared our breakfasts. I think we would have continued like that until our sandwiches were finished and we could curtly go about our separate ways, but I remembered now my promise to Agnes, and my heart sank a little.

  Still, I had to try, and to try I had to engage this perverse woman in conversation. I said, ‘I must say, I didn’t expect you to belong to a painting circle. You don’t seem the type who enjoys the company of others.’

  She turned an icy glare on me. ‘There’s quite a lot you don’t know about me, Mr Carver.’

  Surely, I thought to myself, I could engage her in conversation a little better than that. I tried again. ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ I said. ‘I can only go on what I’ve seen. Still, I’m sure it helps the muse, to belong to a circle.’

  She sighed, and closed her sandwich tin. ‘If you must know, the circle’s an offshoot of the Socialist Women’s League. It’s supposed to help the working woman engage with art, except of course working women have no time for art, and so it’s only ladies of leisure who belong. Is that enough information for you?’

  I frowned. ‘You’re a socialist?’

  She waggled her head to mean, I supposed, Perhaps.

  ‘Now that really does surprise me,’ I said.

  ‘Oh yes?’ Her smile was tight and drawn. ‘How so?’