You'll Never See Me Again

by Lesley Pearse

  ‘I’m sure you did fill that big hole, though,’ Joan said.

  ‘I suppose I did, in part, but he was never quite the same again. I used to make apple dumplings for him, because Mother always made them. I suppose I was trying to fill her shoes.

  ‘When I met Martin, and he went fishing with Father, I think he felt happy again then. He told me on our wedding day that Martin was the man he had always wanted for me. After I ran away, I kept remembering those words. It made me feel I’d let my father down.’ She paused, wiping a tear from her eye. ‘He was lost at sea in a storm. That was a terribly sad time, but Martin was wonderful. He always knew the right thing to do or say for me. Then the war came, and Martin enlisted. Perhaps it was as well Father died without knowing what was to come.’

  ‘You’ve had some tough times, my dear,’ Joan sighed. ‘But in a way, I think your early years were luckier for you than mine were. My mother died when I was four, I don’t really remember her, and my father just disappeared after leaving me with his sister. I didn’t have the same hardships as you – there was enough food, clothes, warmth and comfort. At fourteen I was put into service and there I remained until I went to work for the Gladsworthys.’

  ‘So why do you think I was luckier than you?’ Mabel asked, puzzled by that remark.

  ‘You were loved, Mabel. I never was. My aunt was a cold fish. She made sure I had everything I needed to stay alive, but there was no affection, no real interest in me. That’s almost certainly why I am afraid to marry Percy now, and why throughout my life I’ve kept my distance from people. But you, Mabel, you just know how to give and accept love, that was your parents’ legacy to you. There’s a warmth in you that draws people to you.’

  Mabel stood still, turning towards Joan. ‘But I feel warmth in you too,’ she said. ‘I didn’t feel it immediately when I got to number six, but it grew little by little. And I feel that warmth and closeness between you and Percy. It’s not too late for you both. You aren’t old!’

  ‘What a long way you’ve come,’ Joan laughed, linking her hand through Mabel’s arm. ‘I had to teach you so much – how to lay a table, make a bed correctly, and countless other things – but you learned so fast. Anyone now would assume you had a privileged background. But it isn’t just that you know how things should be done. It’s that you understand people, and you are at ease with all walks of life.

  ‘But enough of that … tell me about Carsten, the German. You were always a bit vague in your letters about him.’

  Mabel found it was good to talk about Carsten, remembering how he looked, his laughter and how he made her feel special. ‘I’ll never be able to forget how he died,’ she finished up. ‘That was just so terrible, but I’ll never be sorry I met him.’

  ‘Sometimes I think we need to experience true sorrow, if only to appreciate the good things that happen to us,’ Joan said. ‘I know you’ll be fine at the court on Monday. And in a couple of months’ time, you’ll look back on it all and be glad you faced it head-on.’

  By the time they got home, it was nearly six in the evening, and Mabel was feeling pleasantly tired from the long walk, and much calmer. It had been good to open up about her past, and perhaps timely too, for the day after tomorrow she was going to be confronted with it again. Remembering the happy times now would help her cope if the prosecution tried to belittle her.

  They made the tea together, and afterwards played a couple of card games. Then Mabel had a bath and washed her hair, in readiness for the journey to Plymouth the next day.

  Mabel was woken by the sound of church bells. She knew that meant it was nearly seven, and she was astounded she’d slept so well. Hanging on the back of her bedroom door, she saw her dark green shantung costume with the flattering peplum jacket. After she’d gone to bed, Joan must have pressed it for her and primped up the green hat that went with it.

  They had talked about what she should wear yesterday. Mabel thought she should wear black, but Joan didn’t agree.

  ‘You will not creep into that courtroom like a frightened little mouse,’ she said vehemently. ‘You must stand tall, and look confident, honest and sassy. You can’t do that in black. Your skin glows in that green costume, it makes your hair like fire. You are a beauty, Mabel, and I’m not going to let you hide that under widow’s weeds.’

  21

  Mabel watched the man coming towards her along the marble-floored court corridor and guessed it was Haines, purely because his walk matched what John Baring had said about him.

  He shuffled, rather than walked, or at least didn’t lift his feet right off the floor. To her that signified someone lazy who would always take the easiest route. His shoes were not polished, and his black lawyer’s gown looked greasy; as for his wig, that looked a little too big, and messy, as if he was in the habit of throwing it on to the floor.

  As he approached Mabel, she saw he was an unattractive man, sallow, with pockmarked skin and an exceptionally large forehead. If she was in trouble and he was sent to defend her, she thought she’d make a break for it before the trial began.

  ‘Mr Haines?’ she asked, standing up to greet him. ‘I’m Betty Wellows.’ It sounded so strange to give that name, yet when she married Martin, she’d delighted in it.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Wellows,’ he said. At least he had a good, deep voice. She had expected him to have a shrill one. ‘I trust you managed to find a decent hotel last night? I understand you had to come from Bristol.’

  ‘Yes, I did, and the hotel is fine, thank you.’ That, at least, had proved far nicer than she’d expected.

  A couple on the train had recommended it to her. Outside, it looked disappointingly neglected. But inside, it was a different story, with traditional fringed rugs, a spotlessly clean black-and-white tiled floor, and a sparkling chandelier over the reception desk. A young lad carried her bag to her room, which was almost as luxurious and well appointed as the hotel where she’d stayed in Bath with Clara.

  Last night, as she undressed to go to bed, she almost laughed at herself for being so critical – after all, this was only the second hotel she’d stayed in in her whole life, and both were far superior to the way she’d lived in Devon.

  ‘I have seen Agnes fleetingly this morning,’ Haines said. ‘She was, of course, extremely surprised to hear you are alive and are going to be a witness for her defence. I will tell you now, though, Mrs Wellows is suspicious of your intentions. Of course, she is afflicted with the problem of thinking the worst of everyone.’

  Mabel couldn’t help but smile. ‘Yes, that’s her, never a good word to say about anyone.’

  ‘You are the only defence witness,’ he said. ‘I have been unable to find anyone else, not even her vicar or doctor, who would speak up for her.’

  Mabel nodded. ‘Is that why you’ve already thrown in the towel?’

  The man took a step back from her, his expression one of shock and indignation. ‘I have not! What makes you say such a thing?’

  ‘I know Agnes well, remember.’ Mabel shrugged. ‘She doesn’t endear herself to people. But believe me, she did love Martin. She hated me because he loved me more, but I know she wouldn’t harm him.’

  ‘Well, if you can speak up and let the jury hear that, loud and clear, then perhaps we have a chance of her being acquitted. I have to say, you are not what I expected, Mrs Wellows.’

  Again Mabel smiled. ‘You expected a timid version of Agnes? A slovenly fishwife? I was never that, not even when I was gutting fish and mending nets.’

  The look in his shoe-button dark eyes was one of admiration, and suddenly Mabel felt brave.

  The court door opened and a clerk looked out to call Haines in.

  ‘You have to wait here until you are called,’ Haines said, tucking his file of papers under his arm. ‘It may be a long wait. And you must not talk to any witnesses for the prosecution.’ He glanced further along the corridor, towards the entrance hall.

  It was only after he’d gone into the court, and the door h
ad closed behind him, that Mabel saw there were three people sitting about twenty-five yards away. They hadn’t been there when she came in, and they were huddled together in conversation. At a second glance she saw one was Jack Talgarth, a fisherman who had often worked with her father. Sitting next to him was Mrs Mary George, Mabel’s old neighbour in the cottages that were destroyed, and Mr Barnaby, an elderly man who used to come and stay with some relatives in the village for around six weeks every summer.

  Mary was in her mid-thirties, with four children, a tubby but pretty woman with long dark hair, flashing dark eyes and a mouth like a sewer. But she knew better than anyone how hateful Agnes had been towards Betty, especially once Martin had gone off to France. She’d often stood up for her, screamed ripe abuse at Agnes, then made Betty cups of tea and offered her a shoulder to cry on. It was all Mabel could do not to go to her now and be enveloped in one of her fierce hugs.

  But of course she couldn’t. Nor could she hug Jack Talgarth, her father’s younger friend, who often gave her a piggyback up to the cottages when she was a little girl and bought her a few sweets when they took the fish into Plymouth to sell. She guessed he was around forty now, his face as brown and wrinkled as a raisin, just the way her father’s had been.

  Mr Barnaby was the only one she didn’t know well. People said he had come to Hallsands for his honeymoon, thirty years ago, and when his wife died years later, he came back there to remember her.

  It was well over an hour before the first witness, Jack Talgarth, was called. As he went into the courtroom, he winked at her, and she was reminded of how he used to do that when he saw her in chapel with her father.

  She wondered what evidence he was going to give. She remembered him pulling the boat up on the beach with her father, late one afternoon, before she and Martin were married. She was sitting mending a net, when Agnes suddenly appeared above them on the lane and began shouting. She wanted to know where Martin was, and when they acted vague, she accused Jack and Bert of covering up for him. It transpired later that Martin had gone into Kingsbridge to buy a birthday present for Betty, but neither Jack nor Bert wanted to admit that in front of her, as it would spoil her surprise on the day.

  Jack, who was always one to make a bit of mischief, called back, ‘We sent him round to the Hut, so he knows what to do when he gets married.’ The Hut was a joke amongst the fisherman, a wooden shack said to be near Kingsbridge, where you could buy a loose woman and a beer. It didn’t really exist.

  Agnes flew off the handle, shouting that she wasn’t going to let her boy work with depraved men like them, and how her dear departed husband hadn’t made sure the boy got a good education for filthy thugs like them to lead him astray.

  The two men laughed their heads off when Agnes left. But Mabel was scared, because Martin’s mother was always saying cutting things to her, about her being a tomboy, or her hair needing a good brush. Mabel sensed then that once Martin and she were married, Agnes was going to be trouble.

  After Jack had gone into the court, Mabel got out her book, E. M. Forster’s A Room With a View , which Joan had lent her. She’d started it on the train journey but found it hard to concentrate. If she had to sit on a hard bench for several hours, she might be able to lessen the tedium with an absorbing story.

  The courtroom door opened again, about forty minutes after Jack had gone in, and this time it was Mary who was called. She glanced at Mabel as she went in, and frowned, as if not believing what she’d seen. So perhaps the three witnesses hadn’t been told she was alive. And Jack only winked because he winked at all women.

  It seemed longer still before the door opened for the third time and Mr Barnaby was called. It was strangely quiet in the corridor now. Earlier, there had been people milling around, down at the entrance hall, but perhaps they were all involved in other trials now.

  Then just as Mabel felt she must use the toilet or burst, the door opened, and Haines came out.

  ‘The court is in recess, until two,’ he said. ‘I suggest you go and get some luncheon. There’s a good place across the road.’

  ‘How is the trial going?’ she asked, shocked that he didn’t make that news his priority.

  ‘Fast,’ he said with a smirk. ‘I think we’ll be done today. But unless you can perform miracles, she’s going to hang.’

  ‘But why? The judge must know I’m alive?’

  ‘Yes, but the witnesses have all painted a picture of a woman who stamped on anyone that got in her way. Mr Talgarth also pointed out that Martin’s grandfather had left his cottage to Martin, and he was due some compensation for the cottage that was washed into the sea. That’s a powerful motive for killing, even if it’s your son. The woman, Mrs George, she said that Agnes had lost patience with Martin too; she’d been heard shouting at him many times. Then Mr Barnaby saw her fighting with her son on the cliff top. She was pulling Martin around by his arms, and he was trying to get free. He said it was dusk, and he was getting ready for bed, but he got dressed again to go and intervene. When he got outside, they were nowhere to be seen, but Martin was found on the foot of the cliff the following morning.’

  ‘It’s far more likely he flung himself over the top later,’ Mabel argued. ‘I don’t believe she pushed him.’

  ‘I could believe anything of her, she’s a horrifying woman,’ he said, dabbing at his face with a handkerchief. ‘I’ll see you back here at two. I think you’ll be called straight after that.’

  Mabel couldn’t eat a meal; she just went to a tea shop and had tea and a rock cake, and read a little more. Then she walked for a while. But the streets were hot and crowded, it felt as if a storm was on its way, and so she turned back to sit in the cool foyer of the court.

  She wondered if the witnesses had all gone home. They hadn’t come out through the door they went in by. She wondered too if there were many people watching the trial. And indeed what the inside of the courtroom looked like.

  It was just a few minutes after two when she was called in. The first thing that struck her was how gloomy the room was, as the windows were all high up and the walls panelled with dark wood. There was a gallery above the court, which was packed with observers. She saw too that the three witnesses were sitting on a bench at the back of the court.

  But the thing that shook her the most wasn’t the amount of people watching, or the gloom, but Agnes.

  She was standing in the dock, staring balefully at Mabel. She looked old and very thin, her face the colour of putty, and she wore a shapeless grey dress that must have been from the prison where she was being held. Even her hair, which Mabel remembered being a sandy brown, was now almost white, scraped back into a bun, but so sparse that her scalp showed through. Only her eyes remained the same, still blazing the way Mabel remembered, as if she’d been born angry.

  Everyone stood for the judge to come back in, and it was only then that Mabel noted the jury. They were all men, a mixture of well dressed and affluent, shabby and gaunt, some as young as twenty-five and two who looked closer to fifty. The only thing unifying them was that they were all studying her intently.

  She was so nervous, her hands were clammy with sweat. When she was sworn in on the Bible, she could barely say the words.

  Then the prosecution barrister, a burly man with a huge stomach and a red nose, approached the witness box. His first question was, ‘Can I rely on you, Mrs Wellows?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ she replied, a little puzzled.

  ‘It won’t take almost three years, then, before you tell the truth?’

  Mabel knew then what was coming, a character assassination. ‘No, sir, I will tell the truth right now,’ she said, looking straight at him.

  ‘We got word only a couple of days ago that you were not, as thought, drowned in the sea near the village of Hallsands, but very much alive and living in Bristol under an assumed name. Mrs Agnes Wellows, your mother-in-law, had been arrested and charged with your murder. When you disappeared, did you not think to tell someone back in Hallsands
that you were going? Or were you too ashamed to admit you were running off because you’d had enough of an overbearing relative and a shell-shocked husband?’

  ‘On the night in question I was far too distressed and frightened to do anything but run. And for your information, as soon as I discovered Agnes Wellows had been charged with my murder, I spoke to a lawyer who contacted this court,’ she said defiantly. ‘Why I left Hallsands is nothing to do with anyone else, anyway. It isn’t a criminal offence. I have come here of my own free will to tell the court I don’t believe Agnes could kill her son. She is a hateful woman, but she loved him.’

  A ripple of shock at her boldness went around the gallery.

  ‘Mrs Wellows, you will answer questions when I put them to you,’ he said curtly.

  ‘Then ask me some sensible ones,’ she retorted.

  This time it was a ripple of laughter that went around the gallery.

  She could see she was rattling the prosecution barrister, but she was angry now and determined not to be bullied as if she were a criminal.

  ‘Tell me what occurred on the 27th of January, 1917,’ he said. ‘If you can manage that.’

  ‘I was in Tern Cottage, the house belonging to my husband’s grandfather. My mother-in-law lived there too. My husband was also staying there because he couldn’t manage the steep path down to our cottage. The day before, there had been a terrible storm, and at high tide our cottage and the others on the lane down to the sea were in danger of being washed away. On January the 27th, the following day, it was thought the cottages would fall into the sea at the next high tide.