by Ann Bennett
She glances back at the certificate and looks at the signatures at the bottom of the page. Although she should have known it would be there, the name written with a confident flourish still takes her breath away.
Signed the Reverend Ezra Burroughs, before the Registrar of Weirfield District, R. Hunter, this 30th day of September 1934.
Four
Connie
Connie shrinks down in her armchair, listening to the other residents making their way along the corridor for lunch. Her nerves are taut, her ears alert for the sound of someone approaching her door. She is dreading Elsie, Dorothy or Marjory knocking on it and asking her to come along to the dining room. Matron might even put them up to it. Connie has her answer ready, though, in case they do call. She’s feeling poorly; her leg is worse today. She strains to hear their voices amongst the others. There’s another voice she’s listening out for too, although she barely acknowledges the thought.
How will she ever be able to face another trip to the dining room? He’ll be there again for sure. That old man with a stick who’d brought back those bitter-sweet memories. She doesn’t want to remember those times. It’s too painful. Even more painful than remembering the other things she’s been burying all these years.
Despite herself though, she allows her mind to pause for a second and wonder how different her life might have been if he’d stayed. Would she be here now, lonely still amongst all these strangers? How would she have spent those decades? Not studying the Bible and praying with Evie in that chilly old house, she’s sure of that. Tears of self-pity prick at her eyes and she tries to stifle those thoughts. She mustn’t dwell on what happened back then. It will only cause unhappiness.
Instead she allows her mind to wander back to what Elsie and the others had said at lunch yesterday about Father in his glory days. The father who would cut a dash about town.
She remembers how he liked to dress up and how even though he was deeply religious he cared about fashion and fine living. He liked to dress like a gentleman in silk shirts and coloured waistcoats. She thinks about how he would spend days away in London getting fitted for new suits, and come home in his beautiful Jaguar, the back seat and boot laden with boxes of new clothes and shoes. Connie smiles as she pictures the ripple of excitement in the orphanage when he strode in to take prayers each morning; his mane of thick chestnut hair flowing behind him, the sleeves of his silk shirt billowing, and his fine chiselled face held high. His intense black eyes would scan the room, taking in everything and everybody.
She thinks about how Elsie had remembered Father’s motor car too. The Jaguar was his pride and joy. He kept it in the old coach house, and at first, he would pay some of the older boys in the orphanage a few pennies to polish it every week. When he brought it home for the first time Connie must have been nine or ten. She remembers how she and Evie were allowed to sit on the slippery back seat that smelled of new leather while Father drove them out of town and along the river to Henley. They had dressed up in their best for the occasion. How proud she’d felt as they swept along Weirfield High Street where people stopped to stare. Perhaps Elsie and the others were amongst the bystanders that day?
That day, Father took her and Evie for afternoon tea in the Red Lion Hotel at Henley, where they sat at a table in the window overlooking the River Thames. She remembers how Father drank beer out of a tankard at the bar, chatting to the barman.
She sighs. It was the Jaguar that had brought Tommy into her life years later. Soon she is back to thinking those forbidden thoughts again. There’s no escaping them.
‘Would you take a cup of tea out to the coach house, Constance,’ Father had said after breakfast one morning. She remembers that day clearly. It was the spring of 1937. ‘Tommy’s out there working on the car.’
‘Tommy?’
‘Tommy Braithwaite. You must remember him. He was one of our dear orphan boys. Went to work on a farm near Wokingham when he was fourteen or fifteen. He must be twenty-one now. Old farmer Webb has sadly passed away and Tommy came to see me last week saying he was out of work. I’ve given him a job as my driver.’
Mother raised her eyebrows and Connie sensed her disapproval. But Mother said nothing. She never did. And in any case, Father’s generosity in giving a young man a chance in life outweighed any negative thoughts it might engender. Father had a habit of making grand gestures like that.
As Connie carried the cup of tea out to the garage that morning she tried to remember Tommy’s face. There were so many boys passing through the orphanage, it was difficult to distinguish him in her memory from the others.
She remembers now how she paused with the cup, seeing him squatting in front of the car, polishing the chrome radiator as she approached. Even in that position she could tell that he was tall and lithe. He was wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. She noticed his hard, muscular arms, sunburned from his outdoor life. He turned when he heard her approach and, she instantly remembered his face from the old days. Lively brown eyes, full of mischief, unruly dark hair flopping over his forehead.
He leapt up, smiling, thanking her for the tea. The way he looked straight into her eyes with his frank honest gaze sent the blood rushing to Connie’s cheeks. There was something about that look that made her feel so self-conscious she couldn’t wait to get away.
They hardly spoke on that first occasion. Connie hurried back into the house, confusing emotions flooding her mind.
But as she took her class in the orphanage schoolroom that day, she found her mind wandering back to the fleeting encounter that morning. She couldn’t stop thinking about the way Tommy had looked at her. It was almost as if he could see inside her mind, that he knew all about the lies and half-truths that she was living.
Despite her jumbled feelings, she felt compelled to go back the next morning with another cup of tea. This time they exchanged a few words. She can’t remember what was said at this distance in time. She knows that he insisted on calling her ‘Miss Burroughs’, and that she gently corrected him each time he said it.
But it wasn’t the words that mattered. She was drawn to his honesty and his simplicity. Living as she had been by that time for several years carrying a huge burden of guilt and shame, she instantly saw him as an ally, a route to salvation.
Tommy had a twinkle in his dark eyes. She stayed longer each morning when she brought him his tea, letting him pay her compliments, even though they made her blush. She had the feeling that it was wrong, that Father and Mother and Evie would disapprove, but that didn’t stop her.
Now she whittles nervously at the filigree chain she wears around her neck. The tiny key is smooth between her fingers; her eyes stray to the sewing box. She stares at it for a long moment as she wonders whether she has the strength to begin reading the diary today. Is now a good moment?
A trolley rattles along the corridor, the sound of plates and glasses chinking together. Erica or Mairead will be here with her lunch soon. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. After lunch she will force herself to do it, in the dead hours of the long afternoon.
In the meantime, she needs to put Tommy out of her thoughts. She remembers the promise she made to herself a few days ago to go back to the beginning and face up to the past. Her eyes still screwed shut, she scans back down the years, back to well before the time that Tommy came to work for her father, trying to pinpoint the time when things had started to go wrong. Or at least when she started to question some of the things that happened around her, things that she and Evie and Mother never spoke about.
She thinks back to the time that Father first got the Jaguar again. Some workmen came to paint the room above the coach house where once a stable lad would have lived. She remembers how Father took to spending time up there alone. He forbade Connie or Evie to go into the room.
Evie and she used to play hide-and-seek in that room, and it irked her that it would be out of bounds. Once, they plucked up enough courage to ask their mother about it. She sat them down
in the parlour and told them that it was Father’s private hideaway, and that they were not to go up there or ask questions about it or Father would get very angry.
‘But Father already has a hideaway,’ Connie protested. ‘He has his office.’
Evie shot her a warning look. Connie knew it was wrong to challenge her mother, and already a flush was creeping up Mother’s neck.
Mother leaned forward and said quickly in a low trembling voice. ‘Your father is a very busy and important man, Connie. Running the orphanage is a big responsibility for him, and we and all the poor orphan children all depend on him. I don’t want to hear you questioning what he does, or mentioning the subject ever again.’
Connie hung her head.
‘Now go and fetch your prayer book and we will pray for Father’s health and give our thanks to God for Father’s love and protection.’
Connie never spoke about Father’s hideaway again, but she couldn’t stop thinking about it, and glancing up at the curtained window whenever she was out in the yard. It fascinated her, and she would have loved to go up the stone steps at the side of the building to peep through the window, but even the thought of doing that made her tremble.
Sometimes Father would not go up there for weeks at a time, but at other times he would spend long hours in there, even sleeping in the room overnight. On those occasions, when he finally emerged he would look dishevelled, his face grey with exhaustion. And his eyes would be preoccupied and brooding. Connie and Evie would know that they must take care not to disturb him or do anything to upset him.
This went on for several years. Connie grew so used to the situation that she regarded it as normal. Their lives continued much as they had before. Their days began at six o’clock when they got up and went over to the orphanage for breakfast and morning prayers with the other children. When they were eleven they moved from their mother’s class to the class for the older children, taught by Mrs Varney. Mrs Varney was a fierce woman who always dressed in black, with polished hobnail shoes, who carried a cane to rap the knuckles of the children when they talked in class, or failed to follow the lesson. The older girls and boys were looking for apprenticeships and work in the town, on big estates or in nearby farms when they reached the age of fourteen, but Evie was being prepared to stay at the orphanage, and learn to be a teacher herself. In a few years, if she worked hard, she would be able to go to college in London to qualify.
It was about the time that Evie had made the transition from pupil to teacher that Connie first noticed something new and strange about Father’s hideaway. Evie had to stay behind in the schoolroom after lessons, and help Mrs Varney and Mother to prepare for the next day’s teaching. Normally Connie and Evie would have come back to Cedar Lodge together after class, made themselves tea and done their chores in the house. Now Connie came back to the house alone.
A particular evening comes into her mind. She was walking back through the orphanage gardens towards the house alone. It was winter and a storm was whipping up. A wooden gate in the high brick wall separated Cedar Lodge from the orphanage. She remembers how she struggled to close the gate against the wind and dropped her exercise book. Before she could retrieve it, the wind snatched the book up and carried it, pages fluttering, across the lawn and flowerbeds. She cried out and ran after it. She knew the ink would be running in the rain and was imagining the schoolmistress’s cane on her knuckles the next morning. The book blew across the yard and came to rest in front of Father’s car that was parked in the garage inside the coach house. She reached it and bent down to pick it up when another gust whipped it up and carried it inside the garage. She ran after it and picked it up from the oily floor.
It was dark inside the garage, but she didn’t have to see it to know the book was ruined. She stood there catching her breath, wondering what words she could use the next morning to tell the teacher what had happened.
As she stood there beside the gleaming car, she heard a strange sound. It was coming from the room above the coach house, directly above where she stood. The sound was muffled, but she was almost sure it was the sound of someone crying. Chills ran through her body. Whoever could that be? Was she imagining it? Perhaps it was the wind? She was still wondering what to do, when she heard the outside door above her slam and the sound of someone walking down the steps. She flattened herself against the wall and held her breath. As she watched the doorway, she saw her father silhouetted against the wall by the lights from the house as he crossed the yard.
Five
Sarah
Sarah parks in a quiet backstreet. The town is bustling. There has been a market today and stallholders are starting to pack up, stacking crates into vans, sweeping rubbish into piles. She crosses the market square and walks past the shops that line the High Street.
The solicitors’ office is in an imposing redbrick Georgian townhouse, set back from the road with black railings separating it from the pavement. She walks up the front path, hovers on the flagstone step and glances at the brass plaque beside the door.
Cartwrights, Solicitors and Commissioners for Oaths, founded 1925
The receptionist shows her into the waiting room. She sits on the edge of a button-back leather armchair. She bites her nails, wishing she’d had time to have a cigarette before coming in. Perhaps Dad was right. Perhaps it is too soon to be taking this step, but she had felt the need to do something. She had been sure this morning after the conversation with Alex brought back her raw anger. She is not so sure now.
It had been quite easy to get an appointment.
‘Mrs Marshall is the partner who deals with family matters,’ the receptionist had said when she called. ‘She’s had a cancellation this afternoon, so we can fit you in. It’s lucky you called when you did.’
Sarah looks around the room. It’s fitted out like a cross between a country club and a library in a stately home. It’s furnished with heavy antiques and leather armchairs and smells of polish and cigars. Bookcases housing copies of law reports line the walls. Above the fireplace hangs an oil painting of a Victorian hunting scene. A grandfather clock ticks away in the corner.
How Alex would laugh at all this! He loathes anything he considers to smack of small-town snobbery. His taste is reflected in the décor of the restaurant. Ultra-modern and minimalist with clean lines and no clutter. Her mind wanders back there. It is three thirty. Normally, at this time, the lunch guests are drifting away, back to their offices. Carlo will be ushering them to the door, finding their coats. The waiters will be clearing the tables, preparing for the evening. The kitchen staff will be winding down, putting equipment away, scrubbing the surfaces, cleaning the floor. Did Alex open up and invite the journalists along for lunch as he’d threatened?
It feels odd not to be there, in charge, looking after the staff, chatting to the diners, making sure things run smoothly. Dad was right, it has been her whole life. All she has ever really known since she left college.
‘Mrs Marshall will see you now.’ The young, blonde receptionist is standing in the doorway, a sympathetic smile on her face. She must know what I’m here for. She feels sorry for me, Sarah realises. Feeling defiant she raises her chin and smiles brightly as she walks past.
Judith Marshall is a large woman dressed in a tweed suit and flat practical shoes. She looks to be in her mid-fifties, with wispy grey hair caught up in a straggly bun. She reminds Sarah of an eccentric schoolteacher. She gives Sarah’s hand a firm shake and offers her tea.
‘Do take a seat. Now how can I help you Mrs Jennings?’ She pours the tea and hands Sarah a cup.
‘I need some advice,’ Sarah says, settling herself into a chair opposite the desk. ‘I’ve left my husband and I need to know my position.’
‘Of course. I understand.’ A reassuring, almost motherly smile. ‘That’s what I’m here for. Now fire away. Tell me all about it. When exactly did you leave?’
‘Yesterday.’
‘And was it a sudden decision? Did something particular
happen?’
‘It felt sudden, but in actual fact, it had been building up for some time. What happened this week brought it all to a head.’
Sarah hesitates. This feels odd, telling it all to a stranger, when she hasn’t told anyone else the full story, not even Dad. Judith Marshall is looking at her with kindness and sympathy in her soft grey eyes. Her pen is poised above her notepad and her attention is completely focussed on Sarah. It’s good that she isn’t intimidating, but will she understand? She must have heard different versions of the same story a thousand times. How on earth can she stand it, seeing nothing but the rotten side of life, the underbelly of people’s relationships, like turning over a stone in the garden and seeing all the worms and insects crawling underneath.
‘I don’t quite know where to start.’
‘Well, why don’t you start by telling me why you left? We can work back from there.’
Sarah takes a deep breath and tells her about the early morning visit from the fraud squad. Was it really only two days ago? She tells her everything. All about how the police had gone through the files in the office, through the computers, all the accounts, how they had questioned her and how they had removed all the files and paperwork that related to Alex’s new business.
‘I had to send the staff home and close the restaurant. When the police had finally gone yesterday afternoon I went back home, packed a few things and left.’
‘Was it the shock of the investigation? Do you think your husband has done something wrong?’