A Bitter Truth (7 page)

“Don’t you trust him?”

“I don’t trust myself, Bess. I’ll start to cry. Besides, he hasn’t shown any softness toward me. He was just as pleasant to you, if you think about it.”

I disagreed. But it was clear that Lydia was still uncertain of her welcome.

“Lydia, I must go to Somerset. I’ve been looking forward to seeing my family.”

“Another day. Two. They’ll arrive tomorrow, and the service will be the next day. Friday. Sunday they’ll leave. George can drive you back to London. He won’t mind at all. I know what Roger said, but George lost his brother and then Alan, after being wounded himself. It hasn’t been easy.”

“Lydia, I’ve promised. My family—I—”

“I know. Dear God, I know.” She put her hands to her head, one on either side. “I can’t think for it hurting. Could I have something for it?”

“No, it isn’t wise to take a sedative when concussion is suspected.”

With a sigh she nodded. “All right. I’ll try to sleep again.”

I left her then, and went back to my own bed. When I came again at four, she was sleeping, but restlessly, without dreaming. I stood in the doorway, watching her toss and turn, then went again to my own room.

The next morning Lydia came down to breakfast looking pale and anxious. Mrs. Ellis hovered, asking me if all was well. Roger, watching his wife, made no comment. I thought perhaps Mrs. Ellis had told him the doctor’s diagnosis, and I wondered if he’d taken it with a grain of salt. But Gran had something to say.

“This is ridiculous, Lydia. Brace up, and let’s get on with the work that needs to be done before anyone sets foot through our door. You can feel sorry for yourself when they’ve all gone again.”

“Gran—Dr. Tilton was worried about her.”

“Yes, Amelia, no doubt he was. But what are we to do? It’s Lydia’s fault, after all, that we’re behind as we are.”

Roger said, “Gran—”

But she interrupted him. “Roger, dear, you have enough to do. We’ll manage, somehow.”

“I’ll help,” I volunteered. After all, it was several hours until my train left. And so I found myself swept up in the last-minute preparations.

There were linens still in need of airing, and beds needing to be made up. Margaret and I worked together, and she told me how she was counting on Henry receiving leave.

“I tell myself not to hope, but I can’t help it. He and Alan were close, you know. It would mean so much to him to be here.”

The weather had cleared marginally, but fires had to be built in all the guest rooms. While Lydia was given the task of polishing the silver, I set the table in the dining room. Mrs. Ellis, looking in on me, apologized again for putting a guest to work, but I was reminded by the strain in her eyes that her son’s death was still fresh, and I said only, “It’s all right, truly it is.”

“I know you’re looking forward to Christmas with your family. But could I prevail upon you to stay until Sunday? You’ve been so good to Lydia, I hesitate to ask more of you, but I’ll feel so much better if you’re here to keep an eye on her. I’ll have my hands full, and I’m not sure she’ll take proper care of herself. I’ll ask Roger to drive you directly to Somerset. He’ll be glad to do it.”

I didn’t think he would.

And where was Simon? Had he got my message? I’d thought he might come to fetch me, rather than leave me to take today’s train.

“Could you at least speak to your mother, and ask her to let us keep you a little longer?”

What could I say to that plea?

“If someone could drive me into Hartfield, to find a telephone?” I said.

“Of course! Roger has a list of things Mrs. Long requires for the kitchen. There’s a telephone at the The King’s Head,” Then she asked, frowning, “Will she mind terribly? Your mother?”

I thought very likely my mother would. But she would not make a fuss.

Roger Ellis came to collect me shortly before eleven and drove me into Hartfield.

He was, he said, glad to escape the madhouse that Vixen Hill had become. But I thought he actually wanted to ask me some questions.

I was right.

The clouds were heavy with moisture, dark and threatening, but no rain had fallen. As we reached the track that carried us through this part of Ashdown Forest, Roger swore under his breath as a small herd of some twenty sheep blocked our way. Their thick coats seemed to be impervious to the rain, just as they were impervious to the motorcar’s horn. Finally, managing to drive around them without peril to man nor beast, Roger said to me, “How did you meet Lydia?”

I considered what to answer, then said, “In London. I think she told you as much.” Did it really matter to him? Because if it did, if this wasn’t simply a polite opening to a pleasant conversation, I needed to be on my guard. I didn’t think he would strike me, but there was still that well of anger in him I’d sensed the instant he’d come into the sitting room shortly after I’d arrived yesterday. It had been most noticeable when he’d argued with his mother over George’s presence. I had no idea what might set it off again in an explosion of violence.

“I’d like to know the details,” he told me, his voice tight.

It suddenly occurred to me what he was asking. “Did you think she went to hospital with that bruise on her face? I’d have advised it, if I’d seen her just after you struck her. The bones around the eye socket are thin. The truth is, I’ve just come home from France. She was waiting for me on my doorstep. Quite literally.”

That stopped him. He turned to look at me and nearly ran the motorcar into a ditch.

“You’re blunt.”

“Yes, I am. You doubt me, you have from the moment you met me, without even waiting to find out if you were justified. I’m a guest in your house, Mr. Ellis, and I do understand that you’ve recently lost your only brother. It’s a time of mourning, and I’m not a member of the family. I don’t wish to be rude, but I think it would be better for Lydia and your mother if we could at least find a way to be civil to each other.”

“I’d like to tell you my side of the story,” he said after a moment. “Will you listen?”

“Of course.” I took a deep breath. “But I must ask you something first. Do you trust your wife, Mr. Ellis? Or is there someone you think she might have gone to, hurt and afraid as she was, and in need of comfort?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he snapped.

“Yet you stayed here in Sussex, didn’t you? She was terrified that you’d followed her to London. She even thought you’d asked the police to hunt her down. She was terrified that you’d be on our doorstep before she could face you again. And she wasn’t at all sure how that meeting would be, or even how you’d receive her. Instead you never really searched for her, did you? Even when you knew she must be somewhere in this wilderness, alone and cold and hurt—physically and emotionally. I wonder why.”

“All right,” he said, goaded. “There was a man she met while I was in France. He lives not far from here. I found out about him quite by accident. He’s blind, you see, shrapnel fragments that scarred his face and took his sight. She went often to read to him. So I was told. It occurred to me that he was here, I was in France, and she was lonely.”

I could have laughed. I hadn’t anticipated jealousy. “Have you met this man?”

“Has she told you about him?” he countered.

“No. Why should she? She came to London because she was afraid. Of you. Of the future. If there had been something between your wife and this man, she would have turned to him. Instead she came to me.”

He digested that for a moment, his eyes on the road. “I shouldn’t have doubted her,” he said finally.

“Did you think that the reason she wanted a child was to hide the fact that she was already pregnant?”

“Yes. All right. It was the first thing that crossed my mind.” His voice was cold, harsh.

“Then you don’t know your wife very well, do you? Or you’d recognize her need for what it is, her love for you.”

“I don’t want children. Now or ever. I don’t want to watch them suffer and die. There’s no more helpless feeling, I can tell you. I watched as my own father walked out into the heath and killed himself because the child he loved best was dead. I don’t want to see my wife grieve for one dead child when she has three living children, as my mother did for many years. I see no reason to put myself or Lydia through that nightmare. I won’t.”

Which explained a good deal about Roger Ellis. I wondered if he and Lydia had ever really discussed having children in a quiet and reasonable fashion, or if their feelings were too shut away for them to explain to each other just how they felt.

I also found myself wondering if somewhere, sometime Roger Ellis had strayed, and if this was why he was so ready to believe his wife had been unfaithful.

He answered one of my questions. “We were married in 1913. In the autumn. It was the happiest I’d been for longer than I could remember. Barely a year later the war started, and I enlisted at once. I couldn’t wait to get to France, fool that I was. Lydia begged me to wait and see whether it would last, but I promised her I’d be home again before she knew it. Instead I didn’t see her for three years. We wrote, of course, but it wasn’t the same. And I knew she was angry with me for lying to her. But I hadn’t, I’d really believed that the war would end before I saw any of the fighting. I wouldn’t have blamed her for looking elsewhere.”

A silence fell between us, and then Roger Ellis said, “I never heard her mention your name before yesterday. Why hadn’t she said something to me in a letter about having seen you in London—or asked me if I’d had word of you in France? She asks often enough about our neighbors’ sons and brothers, you’d think she’d have been concerned about you as well. I asked Daisy, but she didn’t recall mail coming for my wife with your return address on it.”

I knew the anxiety of waiting for news. I’d asked about mutual friends whenever I’d run into someone I knew.

“What did you think? That she had made up our friendship, simply because you can’t find a letter from me in her desk? I expect you looked last night, didn’t you?” I said. “If you’re trying to convince yourself that there was a conspiracy of silence involved, then perhaps I should ask you why it is that you are willing to believe the worst of me as well as your wife? If you must know, your father was once friends with mine. Or so your mother has told me.”

He shot a look at me, as if trying to decide if I was telling the truth.

“Ask her,” I said shortly.

And I had a feeling he would not.

We drove on without speaking, and I looked out across the barren world of the heath, at the sheep grazing where kings once hunted, and a line of cows meandering toward a distant meadow, lined up as if in a queue. The weather seemed even grimmer and colder here. It was such a cheerless place to live. Even the deserts of Rajasthan were full of life, and the vast stretches of Egypt’s Western Desert for all its endless sand offered more to the eye than the stunted branches of gorse and heather and twisted scrub.

We came into Hartfield, the bustling life of its main street a welcomed sight. I saw the doctor’s gate as we passed. A line of pretty cottages along the high street caught my eye. The rain was finally coming down in a fine mist. Ignoring it, women went about their marketing, pushing prams, pausing to gossip on a corner, while men, black umbrellas shielding their faces, strode purposefully toward their destinations. Roger Ellis gestured toward his right. “There’s The King’s Head. They have a telephone. I’ll leave the motorcar in the yard, shall I, and meet you here in half an hour. Will that do?”

“Yes, thank you.” The inn stood at the far end of town, on the corner of a street that led up to a church. A tall black and white building with small-paned windows, it boasted a large sign with a crowned head that appeared to be Charles I with his narrow face, pointed beard, and long dark locks.

As Roger Ellis brought the vehicle to a stop, I noticed the small house just across from us. It was painted a very pleasing shade of blue. There was a sign hanging on the white gate in front of the tiny garden. A painted border of flowers framed the words
BLUEBELL COTTAGE
.
A ginger cat lay curled up in the window next to the door, asleep on a cushion the same color.

Roger Ellis saw the direction of my gaze. “Pretty, isn’t it?”

“Yes, very much so,” I replied and was on the point of turning toward the inn.

His voice stopped me. It was flat, without emotion, but I sensed the effort he’d needed to keep it that way.

“Her blind officer lives there. In Bluebell Cottage,” he said, and walked away, leaving me standing in the middle of the inn yard.

Chapter Four

I
spoke to my mother, who pretended that she wasn’t disappointed that I wasn’t coming home directly. I explained my situation as best I could—the telephone was in a cranny without a door, and I knew that anyone passing or standing in Reception just around the corner could hear every word—and I asked if she’d forgive me for putting Lydia first.

“Yes, of course I will. But when were you invited? I didn’t quite understand?”

“I ran into someone in London and came down to Sussex with her. A family member died recently, and the stone for his grave is ready to be set in place. The rest of the Ellis family is expected today for a small ceremony. They’d like me to stay.”

“Darling, I didn’t know you were acquainted with anyone in that part of Sussex. Are you quite sure you’ve told me everything, Bess, dear?”

“This telephone is in a very public place. Please, ask Simon. He can explain this far better than I, just now.”

“I don’t know that he’s at the cottage just now. He and your father went off together, and the Colonel Sahib hasn’t returned.”

“I’ll write,” I said. I had half an hour, I could find hotel stationery and send a short note. “Will that do?” Although any letter would reach Somerset after I did.

“Darling, don’t worry about it. You’ll be home in a few more days. We can talk then, shall we? You sound tired and more than a little anxious. A party might be just the thing.”

Depend on my mother to put the best face possible on any situation.

“Thank you,” I replied, utterly sincere. “I’ll still write.”

I rang off.

Finding hotel stationery was simple enough, and I had a pen with me. Finding a quiet corner to sit in was another matter. It was nearly eleven, and people were coming and going as if this were the hub of activity in the town.

I sat down on a window seat overlooking the street and made an attempt to explain how and why I’d found myself in Sussex instead of Somerset. It was not my best effort, but it would have to do. I wrote my parents’ direction on the envelope, and was about to ask Reception where I could find the post office, when I noticed the door of Bluebell Cottage opening and a man stepping out into the street.

He was holding a cane, using it to find his way, as if he had done this a thousand times and knew where he was. Turning to his right, he moved carefully but confidently along the pavement, and people passing him greeted him as if he were fairly well known.

In spite of the hat he wore pulled down to conceal his scars and blind eyes, I could see that he had good bones, a firm chin, and dark brows. Not precisely handsome, but what my mother would call a good face.

In front of the greengrocer’s shop stood another man in a threadbare, ragged coat two sizes too large for his thin frame, and the shoes on his feet were worn almost to the point of the leather cracking open. I thought perhaps he’d been begging, because as I watched, I saw the greengrocer come out his door and angrily tell him to move on. He shuffled along to the ironmonger’s shop and stopped again. Then he looked up, saw the blind man coming his way, and waited until he was close enough to speak to.

I couldn’t hear the conversation of course, but it was obvious the poor man was asking for money. The blind man nodded, reached into his pocket, and took out some coins, dropping them into the grimy, outstretched hand. The beggar touched his cap in gratitude, his thanks following the blind man as he walked on.

Watching this interaction, I’d nearly forgot my letter, and made haste to walk on to speak to the desk clerk. I was halfway there when I all but collided with Roger Ellis coming out of a small parlor just off Reception. I wondered for a fraction of a second if he’d been in a position to overhear my telephone conversation.

“Going somewhere?” he asked, and I knew then that from the parlor window he must also have seen the occupant of Bluebell Cottage walking down the street.

“Yes,” I told him. “I was in a hurry to mail this letter before it was time to meet you.” I held up the envelope, addressed and sealed but without a stamp. “Do you suppose we could stop at the post office?”

I watched him scan the address. “Of course,” he said, and we moved outside again into the chill December. He opened the door of his motorcar for me, and I noticed over his shoulder that the blind man had disappeared from view. But I saw the beggar stopping another man in front of the pub farther along the street.

We paused at the post office, I purchased a stamp, and my letter was dropped into His Majesty’s red post box. We drove back to the main street and headed toward the Forest. We had nearly reached the outskirts of Hartfield when we both saw the occupant of Bluebell Cottage about to cross the street. But Roger Ellis hadn’t slowed his speed, and I thought for a moment he intended to knock the man down. Someone just behind the blind man caught his arm and spoke to him, and then we were past.

“That was cruel,” I snapped. “You could have hurt him.”

“I doubt it. I’ve had a feeling his vision has improved more than he was willing to acknowledge. I’ve watched him walk through the town before this, and he has an uncanny ability to avoid obstacles.”

“Why should he lie? It’s familiarity that guides him, and remembering the number of steps to this or that place. Besides, however good his vision may be, what right do you have to test it by frightening the man?”

“Yes, all right, I’m sorry,” Ellis said. “I thought when you first came through the hotel door with that letter in your hand that you were taking it across to his cottage. I was angry.”

“I showed it to you. It was to my parents.”

“But you just spoke to them on the telephone, did you not?”

Exasperated, I said, “I did. And I promised my mother I’d write a note as well. Do you know where that telephone is? Hardly the place for a private conversation of any kind. How could I tell her that I was worried about Lydia having a concussion, without also telling the entire village as well?”

“I apologize,” he said again. “It’s my shoulder. It hurts like the devil in this weather and after a while it begins to make me short-tempered.”

I didn’t know if that were true or an excuse for his behavior. I said only, “Where were you wounded?” Lydia had told me it had happened soon after he reached France.

“Near Mons. It’s healed well enough, and I have full use of it again. But it’s an excellent barometer. I’m told there are still several shards of shrapnel they couldn’t reach without doing more damage.”

“Yes, that’s often a problem,” I agreed. “Although I’m told the American Base Hospital in Rouen has an X-ray machine that allows them to locate shrapnel exactly and that makes the surgery far less invasive. I don’t know whether your shoulder will improve with time or not. But you might speak to someone there if it continues to trouble you.” It was a professional assessment, not meant as a personal judgment.

“I’ll manage,” he retorted.

“Yes, I’m sure you will,” I answered, biting my tongue. Lydia was right about the fact that this man was moody and unpredictable. I let the silence between us lengthen.

I
was glad to see the turning for Vixen Hill as we came down the muddy track, bouncing and shuddering in the ruts. It couldn’t have helped either Roger Ellis’s shoulder or his disposition.

I went directly to my room, took off my hat and coat, and sat down by the window for a moment. Trying to imagine how the knot garden must look in summer helped to take the edge off my own mood. It seemed to me that Lydia and her husband had lost the happiness that must have marked the beginning of their marriage, and I wasn’t sure they could find their way back to it now. But at least now I could better understand her reluctance to come home on her own. And I pitied both of them. What troubled me was whether my presence aggravated Roger Ellis’s sullenness for reasons I couldn’t quite fathom, or if something else was bothering him.

With a sigh I rose from the window to look in on Lydia. But before I could open my door there was a light tap, and then Lydia stepped in.

“Roger is looking decidedly sheepish. What did you say to him?”

I thought about our conversations, about the occupant of Bluebell Cottage, and Roger Ellis’s suspicious nature. Hardly something I could pass on to Lydia.

Instead I said, “I’d written a brief note to my mother, and when your husband saw it in my hand, he thought I was carrying a message from you to the occupant of Bluebell Cottage. By the time he realized his mistake, I could see that he was more than a little jealous. Have you given him cause to be?”

She threw up her hands in disgust. “That’s Gran’s doing. I volunteered to read to Davis Merrit. In fact, it was Mr. Harris, the rector, who asked if I had the time to come and read to him. And I’ll be honest, I enjoyed it. He’s an interesting man—Lieutenant Merrit—and the books he chooses interest me as well. Gran disapproves, and it was she who put the idea into Roger’s head that there might be more to those weekly afternoons than meets the eye. No, I’m not in love with Davis. Nor he with me. I suppose we’re both lonely, and there’s comfort in companionship. Such as it is.”

But sometimes loneliness led to something more. And pity could change to compassion, and compassion to love. Still, if it was true that Gran had made more of a kindness than was justified by the facts, it would have been wise for Lydia to see less of Merrit for the time being.

I said as much, and she replied, “Yes, I expect you’re right. But it seemed unnecessarily cruel to Davis to punish him just because such things were very different in Gran’s day. After all, we don’t meet in the cottage, we sit in the Rectory or sometimes he arranges for a parlor at The King’s Head. It’s all very proper.”

“I’ve seen him, Lydia. He’s rather attractive. And you’re vulnerable, with Roger away for so many years.”

She glared at me. “If I were intending to have an affair,” she said, the ring of truth in her voice, “I’d look for someone in London. Far away from Ashdown Forest. Davis is the frying pan to Roger’s fire.”

“You knew what the heath was like, didn’t you? When you married Roger?”

“I thought I did. Roger had brought me here before we were married, and of course I was in love and this was his home. I hadn’t seen it in the depths of winter.” She smiled at a memory. “On my first visit, I found a nest of mice under a gorse bush. Tiny things, hardly as big as my thumb. I watched them for a quarter of an hour. It seemed magical. I’d never found mice in Bury St. Edmunds.”

I laughed. “No, I expect not. Shall we go? Mrs. Ellis must be waiting for me to help with the bed in the blue room. I promised we’d see to it as soon as I returned from Hartfield.”

“Yes, and I’ve left the silver teapot half polished.” She sighed. “Alan wouldn’t have cared for all this fuss, but I know how much it means to his mother. And it’s given her something to keep her mind occupied.” She shivered. “You’d have liked Alan, Bess. He could make you laugh at nothing, and he had the loveliest baritone voice. It was a pleasure to listen to him sing.” As we walked toward the stairs, she added, “Before he went to join his ship in 1914, he put all his affairs in order. I wondered if he had a premonition that he might not be coming back.”

T
he first of the guests were expected in time for tea. It was a little later than that when I heard a motorcar on the drive. By the time I’d looked out, I couldn’t see who had arrived. I smiled to myself, thinking that it was too soon for the Colonel Sahib to appear in full dress uniform and a battalion of Household Cavalry at his back. Or at the very least prepared to deploy the full force of his charm. It could be formidable.

A few moments later, Daisy, flushed with excitement, hurried into the library where I was folding the ironed table linens on the wide desk there to tell me that someone had called to see me.

“To see me?” I repeated. The Colonel Sahib after all.

But it was Simon standing in the hall.

“I should have known. Wild horses couldn’t have kept you away. I’m sorry that you’ve made the journey for nothing. I spoke to my mother this morning. I won’t be coming home until Sunday.”

“I was sent for from Sandhurst,” he said, and I knew not to ask why. “I stopped at Mrs. Hennessey’s when I got back to London, and read your message. Knowing you, I asked her to pack several dresses for you to wear for dinner. According to her, you’d brought only one with you.”

“Did Mother tell you I was staying over?”

He laughed. “She didn’t need to tell me. I had a feeling you’d succumb to pleading. All right, where shall I take your fripperies?”

“You only came to be sure this wasn’t a den of iniquity,” I retorted. But I was inordinately glad to see him.

We carried the valise up the stairs to my room, and as he walked into it he said, “Much more cheerful than the hall.”

“Yes, I thought so as well.” We deposited the valise by the wardrobe.

He glanced at the open door, then crossed the room to close it.

“Are you all right, Bess? You know nothing about these people, after all.”

“Apparently Lydia’s father-in-law had met the Colonel Sahib out in India. That practically makes me one of the family.”

He smiled but wasn’t put off by my humor.