by Penny Kline
‘No, of course not.’ She had said she only wanted advice, not analysing, but I felt I must try to offer her some comfort. ‘When someone dies in such tragic circumstances we all want to find a reason, all wish we could have done something to prevent it.’
‘But there must be a reason. You see, it’s Wesley I’m worried about, not me. He had no idea you were coming here and you must never tell him, it’s just, I feel I must find a way of stopping him going over and over what happened, looking through photograph albums of Tricia when she was a baby, Tricia when she started at primary school. It’s so bad for him. He should be getting on with his life, trying to push what happened out of his mind.’
What was I supposed to say? I could hardly tell her that Wesley’s response was far more normal, far more likely to help him to come to terms with the tragedy, and that her way was almost guaranteed to lead to either a mental or physical breakdown.
‘Sometimes it’s as if he tries to make himself feel bad,’ she said angrily. ‘He had a little snuff box — he collects antique boxes and tins — with a lock of Tricia’s hair. It must have fallen out of his pocket, oh, months back, but he will keep on about it. Only a lock of hair.’ She sounded as if she was talking about a silly child.
‘I expect it meant a lot to him,’ I said, identifying with poor Wesley, but hoping my words didn’t sound like a criticism of her.
She was thinking about something, but not what I had just said. ‘Tom Luckham,’ she said suddenly. ‘If he was alive he’d have told Wesley to find new interests, stop dwelling on the past. After it happened Tom was devastated, but he believed like I did that God must have had a reason.’
For Tricia’s death? My father had started to say something along the same lines, a week or so after my mother died, then he had noticed the expression on my face and realized it was better left unsaid.
Marion reached out to pull a dead leaf off a pale green vine. ‘Not many people knew,’ she said, ‘but Tom had bouts of quite severe depression. He hid them, even from his family, and never let them interfere with his work, but I could tell. I was once a health visitor, you see. And Tricia knew. He used to ask her advice, mostly about Clare.’
‘Clare Kilpatrick?’
‘I’m not breaking a confidence when I say Clare had a very difficult childhood. Tom could tell she was going to end up in trouble, drinking too much, going around with very unsuitable people.’
So Tricia Young had known Clare. Had they gone to the same school, even been in the same class? But if Tricia had been eighteen when she died the previous July that meant Clare would have been at least a year behind.
‘You’ve met Clare,’ said Marion. ‘We’re very fond of her, Wesley and I, we understand her, but what she needs just now is to be allowed to run her own life.’ She pulled off another leaf. ‘I’m sorry, I remember telling Stephen this would only take a few minutes and here I am, jumping about from one subject to another.’
‘When you say Clare needs to be allowed to run her life, do you mean too many people have been trying to help her?’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that, but she’s quite a capable girl. The trouble is, she was so fond of Tom and ever since he died … And if someone puts an idea into her head she does tend to embroider it, if you know what I mean.’
It was as if she were trying to tell me something important, while at the same time making sure her remarks were so vague she could never be accused of spreading rumours.
‘What kind of an idea?’ I asked.
‘Oh, I don’t know, I just think, but of course it’s only my opinion … Wesley and I are more than happy to give her all the support she needs, but it’s important she starts to feel confident enough to take responsibility for herself.’
Now, what was she saying? That too much help was making Clare dependent? That I should persuade Stephen to stay away from her for a while? But if she thought he was doing too much why couldn’t she tell him herself? Then it occurred to me that she might be jealous of Stephen, that she wanted anyone in a professional or semi-professional role to stay out of Clare’s life and leave her and Wesley to play substitute parents.
‘These stories about Tom,’ she said, ‘whoever started them, all they’ve succeeded in doing is making a lot of people very unhappy. I hate gossip, don’t you? Tom didn’t have an enemy in the world. If he was suffering from depression and saw it as the only way out, don’t you think he deserves to be left in peace?’
So she and Wesley both thought Tom Luckham had taken his own life.
‘If you could talk to the police,’ she said, screwing up her face, willing me to accept the importance of what she was saying. ‘Stephen says you know an inspector or a superintendent or someone. If you explain then I’m sure they’ll realize Clare had absolutely nothing to do with what happened.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘but I’m not quite sure what you mean. As far as I know the police have no interest in Clare, apart from the fact that she thinks she may have seen a passenger in Tom Luckham’s car — the day he died.’
‘Oh, that.’ Marion put a hand up to smother a yawn. ‘Well, if that’s all it is I’m very relieved to hear it. Clare’s a lovely girl, she just didn’t have a very good start in life.’
Any moment now and she was going to show me out of the house. Why was she being so protective of Clare? Because she had become a substitute for Tricia? It seemed rather unlikely.
‘Does Clare have a boyfriend?’ I asked.
‘Boyfriend? Oh, no, I don’t think there’s anything like that.’
I wanted to tell her how I was certain I had seen Clare and James together in Coronation Road, but if they were having an affair and wanted to keep quiet about it, it was hardly up to me to give away their secret.
A dreamy expression had come over Marion’s face. ‘That’s quite a good picture of my daughter,’ she said, nodding in the direction of the wall above my head, ‘taken two months before she died.’
I stood up to get a better look.
‘No one would have called her pretty,’ said Marion, ‘not in the conventional way, but she has a very strong face, don’t you think, full of character? Of course it was Wesley who found her and I sometimes think that was what she’d planned. Do you think that could be right?’
She wanted me to say something, but I knew so little about the suicide. ‘Did she take an overdose?’ I asked. ‘Was it here, in the house?’
She frowned. ‘Oh, I thought you knew. I thought Stephen would have told you. It was in the old sports pavilion, up by the playing fields. It’s kept locked of course but Tricia had a key, so she could do her little cleaning job.’
‘She cleaned the pavilion?’
‘Yes, that’s right. It’s an unusual building, with quite a high ceiling. There’s a room where they have meetings, or prepare the teas for after the cricket matches. She was hanging from one of the beams.’
Chapter Fourteen
Livvy’s book of poems was in my filing cabinet. I took it out, flicked through the pages, and a sheet of paper fell out. Another poem? It was handwritten in large, spidery letters and round the edge of the paper was a kind of frieze of pin men.
I sat down, started to read, and experienced an unpleasant sensation that started in my stomach and spread up to my chest. Then someone knocked on the door.
It was Dawn Rivers. She looked agitated rather than irate. Even so, my heart sank.
‘Are you busy?’ She stood in the doorway. She was wearing an outfit I had never seen before: a black and white checked jacket, plain black skirt, black patent leather shoes. ‘I wondered if I could have a quick word,’ she said. ‘I checked with Heather and she told me there was no one with you at present.’
‘Come in.’ I still had the sheet of paper in my hand. ‘I’ve just been reading something a client gave me.’ Then I broke off, noticing her expression. This was no social call. Why would it be? We were not on those kind of terms.
‘Martin Wheeler’s coming back next week
,’ she said. ‘I expect you’re all very relieved.’
What could I say? ‘Look, I’m sorry things have been a bit difficult. I suppose people get used to working together and they’re not very good at adapting to someone new.'
She pulled out a chair and sat down heavily. ‘No, you don’t have to pretend.’
After all the things I had said about her, now I was trying to find reasons to let her off the hook. If she was a client I would have kept quiet, waited for her to explain, but she wasn’t a client and my stomach was still clenched in a hard knot after reading Livvy’s poem. ‘Just a series of misunderstandings,’ I began, but she interrupted impatiently.
‘No, it’s nothing to do with working here. I was wrong to agree to fill in, not while I was … But I needed the money. You see, I did something incredibly stupid.’ She paused, giving me an opportunity to imagine all the dreadful things she might have done.
‘I’ve been seeing someone — for about two years. He’s married.’
‘Is that all!’ It was an instant reaction, but the wrong one.
‘He told me his marriage was over,’ she said fiercely, ‘then the week before I started working here he moved back in with his wife.’
All of a sudden the tight rein she had kept herself on for the past few weeks gave way and tears started to seep out of the corners of her eyes.
‘I wish you’d told me before,’ I said feebly. ‘If you’d told us when you first came here.’
How could she have done? Confided in total strangers, who had made it clear, pretty well from the start, that they didn’t like her very much? ‘No, of course you couldn’t. Look, I’m really sorry.’
‘It’s not as though it was unexpected,’ she said, pulling a couple of tissues out of the box on my desk. ‘I knew it was going to happen, I was waiting, I knew he’d been lying.’
‘Doesn’t make it any better though, does it?’
She blew her nose. ‘I’ve been offered a job in Ipswich but I’m not sure. It would mean starting all over again. If I stayed in Bristol he might change his mind.’
I should have let her talk but I couldn’t resist the temptation to tell her what to do.
‘Take the job,’ I said. ‘Get right away from him, don’t even keep in touch by letter. Guys like that are bad news.’
She managed a weak smile. ‘You sound as if you’re talking from experience. Anyway.’ She stood up. ‘I wanted to explain before I left. I felt it was only fair.’
‘No, don’t go yet. Look, later on maybe we could go out for a drink or something.’
She nodded vaguely. She had said what she wanted to, now she was anxious to return to her room and repair her make-up before her next client arrived.
I picked up Livvy’s poem. ‘Listen, I’m really sorry, Dawn, I feel awful about the way we’ve treated you. When’s your next client? Have you got time to have a look at this? I’d really like to know what you think.’
She took the sheet of paper and I could see from her face that she thought I was asking her help as a way of making up for the past few weeks. I watched closely as her eyes moved slowly down the page, then back to the top for a second read.
‘This is from one of your clients?’ she asked. ‘He or she wrote it specially — for you?’
‘God, no. At least, I hope not. It fell out of a book she lent me. She writes a lot of poetry, has it printed by one of those vanity publishers.’
Dawn read it through a third time, then turned the paper in all directions, inspecting the pin men in their odd contorted positions. ‘If I were you,’ she said slowly, ‘I’d be rather concerned, very concerned in fact, and not just about the welfare of the client.’
*
Ros had fixed up to see me, by herself this time, not with Livvy. I hoped, for once, she was going to talk about her own problems, but as soon as she arrived she started on a long story about how the doctor had been round when Livvy was still in bed, talked to her for nearly half an hour, then offered her a prescription that she had turned down flat.
‘What was it for?’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Ros gave an exasperated sigh. ‘Tranquillizers, anti-depressants? But Livvy doesn’t believe in any form of medication, unless it’s prescribed by a homeopath or a herbalist.’
‘She’s not your responsibility,’ I said.
‘No, I suppose you’re right. You mean, I’m probably doing more harm than good, encouraging her to talk. She seems to have given up writing poetry for the time being, says she’s going to learn to paint.’
‘Might be a good idea.’ I wanted to tell her about the violent, erotic verses that had slipped out of the book, but that would only have encouraged Ros to spend the whole of her time discussing Livvy. ‘Look, let’s forget about Livvy just for the moment, and you can tell me how you’ve been feeling.’
‘Me?’ She laughed nervously. ‘I suppose Livvy thinks since Tom was a painter …’ Then she noticed my expression. ‘No, I’m not changing the subject, I did want to talk to you, it’s just, if I don’t tell you about Tom it won’t make sense about me and Stephen.’ She paused, trying to work out the best way to explain. ‘Tom was quite a good artist, I think, but that wasn’t enough. He wanted to break new ground, be the greatest painter of the decade. When he found that wasn’t going to happen I suppose he became disillusioned. Then he met up with Neil Hyatt.’
She looked at me enquiringly, but I decided not to tell her how Erica had mentioned the name.
‘Hyatt was a failed painter too, but he had a knack of making money. He persuaded Tom to do a series of prints and, when they sold for quite large amounts, convinced him the two of them could become rich without any great effort on either of their parts.’
‘Did Tom tell you all this?’
‘Tom? Oh, he’d never have done that. I suppose the two of us never really hit it off, but he and Stephen were great chums — for a time. Anyway, it seemed Hyatt had been right. The prints sold in their thousands. You can see them all over the place, hanging in hotel bedrooms, restaurants, airports, you know the kind of thing. Skilful, but totally without any artistic merit.’ She paused, glancing at me, then looking away. ‘I’m quoting Tom, not giving you my own opinion. Of course, after eighteen months or so he couldn’t take it anymore.’
‘Tom couldn’t.’ So far I had learned no more than Erica had told me already.
‘I don’t know what happened exactly.’ Ros picked up a pen on my desk, then gave a nervous laugh and put it down again. ‘Perhaps it was when he turned fifty. No, it was before that. Some kind of life crisis, you know the kind of thing. I believe he claimed to have had a kind of Road to Damascus experience, but then he always tended to dramatize. Anyway, the upshot was he turned his back on the whole prints business and announced he was giving up the art world and becoming a Christian.’
‘Surely one doesn’t preclude the other.’
She gave me a fleeting smile. ‘With Tom it did. Of course, he’d invested all the money, made sure he and Erica would be comfortably off for the rest of their lives. Everything he involved himself in had to be a hundred per cent. D’you know the type? Art, money-making, religion. Is it possible to become addicted to helping people, high on good works?’
She laughed, but without any amusement. ‘Of course Erica found the change of heart rather hard to take. I think they’d been close, once, and now he was out all hours of the day and night, involving himself in everyone else’s problems and never even noticing what was going on in his own family.’
‘Was there something going on?’
‘Sorry? Oh, just the usual things, I suppose. Bringing up two children, running a home. Anyway, after a time she started getting all these symptoms.’
‘Erica did?’
Ros nodded. ‘I suppose it was to get Tom’s attention, but if that was her aim it was a miserable failure. Headaches, stomach aches, dizzy spells, then she started drinking. If it had been anyone else, Tom would have bent over backward to understand, do what he co
uld, but as far as I can make out he just kept telling her to pull herself together.’
‘It’s not always easy with someone close to you.’
She gave me a hard look, then busied herself, opening her bag, searching for something that didn’t seem to be there, then closing it again with a snap and placing it on the floor between her feet. ‘No, you’re perfectly right, and he certainly did a lot of good in the parish. He was loved, there was no doubt about that, only I used to worry about the children. James could take care of himself, I imagine James has always been able to take care of himself, but Sally … Tom was fond of her, and I suppose in that sense she was the one who suffered least, but what’s going to happen now?’
‘How was Stephen involved in all this?’ I asked, trying to steer her back to talking about herself.
‘Oh, Tom and Stephen were inseparable. In fact you could say Tom was almost like an honorary curate, although obviously he couldn’t actually take a service. I used to wonder why he didn’t go the whole hog and get ordained, or at least he could have trained as a social worker, but that would have meant taking notice of other people’s opinions, and, in any case, they probably wouldn’t have taken him on, he’d have been too old.’
‘Did something go wrong between Tom and Stephen?’
She frowned. ‘Wrong in what way?’
‘You said they were great friends — for a time.’
‘Did I? Oh, I don’t know what I meant. They used to argue a lot, but only about theological issues — and things like the changing role of the parish priest.’
‘And you think this affected Stephen’s decision to leave the Church?’
She jumped slightly. ‘Oh, no. No, I’m sure it didn’t. That was because of this book, and as far as I can remember he’d started writing it before he and Tom had even met.’
I wanted to ask if she thought it possible that Tom Luckham had deliberately allowed himself to go into a hypoglycaemic coma. Marion Young seemed to think he suffered from bouts of depression, but Ros had said nothing about it and the impression she was giving was of someone who felt he had found a worthwhile way of life.