A Little Death (30 page)

I met Louisa after she’d given her evidence and we went and sat in a tea-shop somewhere. She was very indignant about the questions they’d put to her; she really thought it was a terrible injustice that all these intimate questions should be asked. I remember she said, ‘Why do people make up these dreadful stories, Edmund? They kept asking me if Georgina was having an affair with Edward Booth—if I’d seen anything, heard anything. How can people be allowed to say these things?’ Louisa was so
blazing
about it, so angry for Georgie, that she was being accused of something despicable—I felt too ashamed to tell her it was true. Then she saw something on my face, there must have been some sign… I couldn’t help it. Not enough of the old whitewash on the wall, I suppose. I knew I’d let the cat out of the bag because she suddenly stopped and said in quite a different voice, ‘I know I’m lucky to have such a happy marriage, Edmund.’ She said it so gently. She was telling me she knew. Then she said, ‘But it makes no difference.’

‘Her lawyer thinks she’ll be found guilty if she admits the adultery. He thinks the jury won’t make a distinction.’

‘Yes. Yes, I can see that.’ Then she said, ‘Perhaps this is cowardice, Edmund, but I’m glad you didn’t tell me beforehand. I shouldn’t have liked to commit perjury.’

When it was all over, Louisa found a place far from London where Georgie could slip away until the fuss had died down. Georgie went there almost as soon as the trial finished and I followed a few days later. I
was—well, I suppose you could say I felt relieved, but there was an unpleasant feeling that one had got away with it, somehow. I can’t pretend otherwise. ‘Thou shalt not get caught’—people always say that’s the eleventh commandment, don’t they? But no matter how much I told myself that Georgie was innocent, or that I was innocent, underneath it came a feeling one couldn’t shift: that we weren’t and somehow all those people in the court knew it.

When Georgie came out after the verdict, they were so angry that I thought they would force their way past the policemen and tear the three of us—Georgie, Louisa, and me—to pieces. There must have been men there, but it’s only the women I remember. Clawing like harpies, shouting ‘Bitch!’ and ‘Murderess!’. Louisa was standing in the middle of it all, holding Georgie’s arm and helping her into the car with Spencer. I was just behind them. I lost my footing getting in and one of the women grabbed my sleeve. I saw her face only for a moment—the top set of her false teeth was hanging loose from the gums and her hat had slipped down over one eye—then the policeman picked me up and helped me into the car with the others and we sat there, pinned together in the back seat, and nobody said anything while the driver nudged his way through the crowd… And I thought:
They know.
Somehow, they know.

It wasn’t over, that was the trouble. It wasn’t finished. Jimmy deserved better than a lot of lies. Those people didn’t know him, but they knew that what had been done wasn’t justice. The day before I left for Suffolk I went into Jimmy’s old club to fetch some letters and one or two bits and pieces, and while I was there I ran into Teddy Booth. It was in the lobby and I was standing in such a position that I saw him before he saw
me. He was turning over some letters on the porter’s desk, and when he heard me call out he raised his head and looked round to see who it was. When he saw me, his face—his expression—completely changed. He governed it almost immediately, but although he was civil enough when he spoke, it was that depth of revulsion— because that’s what it was, absolute revulsion—and I knew that he knew about us.

I thanked him for what he’d said in court and he muttered something in reply. He may have asked me how I was or how Georgie was, I don’t remember. I could see there was no point in pretence so I said, ‘What will you do?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Will you tell anyone?’

‘No. That won’t help Jimmy, poor bastard.’

I felt as though I’d been drenched with ice water. I tried to speak, I didn’t know what I was saying, nonsense probably, but he cut me off. He grabbed my arm and took me outside. At first I hardly heard him, he was spitting the words out so fast. ‘Jimmy wrote me a letter. The week before. Oh, you needn’t worry on that score, Lomax, I’ve burned it. He told me he had a suspicion, he didn’t know what would happen, but he had to find out if it were true. He asked me to protect Georgie, said he wanted me to know he didn’t hold me at fault. But I’ll tell you something, Edmund, something for nothing. Jimmy didn’t have to blame me—I blame myself.’ I wanted to say something, not to defend myself—how could I do that? I think I tried to thank him again, but he said, ‘That’s enough.’ He let go of my arm and went back into the club.

I went up to Suffolk the next day—I hadn’t got the letters, so I’d wired to have them sent on. I couldn’t get Booth’s words out of my mind. I wasn’t worried that he
would tell anybody what he knew, because I was sure he wouldn’t. It was the experience of seeing ourselves through his eyes that was so dreadful. Every time I thought of his face I almost vomited. Because that brought it home to me: Whatever happened between Georgie and Teddy Booth, he was a good, decent man and I knew that to everyone like him, to
Louisa
, what we’d done had made us outcasts.

Louisa had found us a good big house in Suffolk and hired a couple of the local women to do for us. The garden was a long stretch of land overlooking an estuary. No boats, because it was too choked with reeds. It was next door to a rather beautiful little church—whitewashed walls, timber beams, very simple, but quiet, with a churchyard full of flowers. I used to go and sit on a bench in there when there wasn’t a service. You could see right across the estuary—barely a house or barn in sight, nothing but miles and miles of water and reeds. I spent a lot of time sitting there. I used to try to pretend that Louisa was with me in the house, that she was going to come out and sit down next to me, just as if she’d been there all the time. If I could pretend that, I could pretend that none of it had ever happened, but I could never make it last very long.

Georgie stayed in bed most of the time. She seemed quite happy. We played cards and solved the crossword puzzles, and laughed about books and did all the things that we’ve always done, the things she likes. She wanted the newspapers, the gramophone that Louisa brought us, all the ordinary things, and as long as she had those she was quite happy. I remember she joked that people would be shocked if she wrote her memoirs, but she didn’t mention Jimmy or the trial. She talked about Booth, though, how fond she was of him. I think she
may have written to him, but he didn’t reply. I didn’t tell her we’d met.

There was a man I knew, Wilfred Strauss. We were at school together and he lived in a village near the house where we were staying, but I hadn’t seen him for years. An acquaintance had told me that Strauss had become a recluse, but he sent an invitation that we should go to tea with him on a certain day. I thought Georgie would refuse, but she told me she’d written to him and accepted. It turned out that he was very well thought of in the neighbourhood and because he was a bachelor all the local ladies wanted to look after him. I think he must have been the only person in England who hadn’t heard about the trial. At first I thought he was simply being polite, but it soon became clear that he wasn’t interested in the papers or the wireless, or anything except his hobby, which was taxidermy.

We sat in his study, which was crammed with stuffed animals of various shapes and sizes—everything from a llama with a monkey on its back to a glass case full of sparrows—and had a marvellous tea, just like the ones I remember from visits to other boys’ houses during my school days. I don’t think I have ever seen so many different types of cake on a single table—all of them baked by these ladies. I remembered Strauss quite well from school—thin and rather shy, the sort of chap who gets called peaky and dosed a lot. He’d grown quite portly—too much cake, I should think. He ate it with his fingers and kept asking us if we wouldn’t like another slice. Afterward he took us round his house and pointed out all the things he’d stuffed. They were very well done—there was one in particular, a lioness, positioned with her head looking out from behind a door, as if she were about to spring. Strauss said he’d done it eleven years before and his housekeeper was still terrified
of it. I remember he talked a lot about a taxidermist called Potter who used to make tableaux with small animals and dress them up in fancy hats and so forth. Strauss showed us one he was recreating: guinea pigs playing cricket. He’d made stumps and pads for them, and he’d had half the women in the village stitching away at miniature striped jackets and caps with tiny badges on them.

Georgie was very elated on the way home. Strauss had offered his car, but she insisted we walk, to my great surprise, because she never walks anywhere if she can help it, she’s too fond of motoring. As soon as we were out of earshot, she started roaring with laughter. ‘Guinea pigs! Wasn’t that the funniest thing you’ve ever seen in all your life?’

I couldn’t quite see what she was getting at, so I said, ‘Well, it’s nice for a chap to have a hobby like that.’

‘But those little coats and hats! Oh, Edmund, weren’t they cunning?’

I didn’t like the sound in her voice, because I knew that once she got excited like that it might last for days, so I tried to calm her down, but she wasn’t having any of it. ‘Oh, darling, I’m so happy, I could stay here for ever. And wasn’t it kind of Louisa to find us such a perfect little house? Don’t you think it’s wonderful, all this? Don’t you, Edmund?’

‘Yes, lovely. Can we go home now?’

‘Wait, I want to pick some flowers. I’ll pick some for you, shall I? Wild flowers? Would you like that, Edmund?’

‘Let’s go home, Georgie.’

‘All right, stickin-the-mud. Here you are.’ She started trying to shove a great bunch of flowers into my buttonhole. ‘We’ll always be together now, won’t we, Edmund?’

All her grasses and things were staining my jacket. I felt as if someone had poured lead into my stomach. ‘Leave it be, Georgie.’

‘Don’t you see, this was meant to happen.’

‘No, I’m afraid I don’t see.’

‘It was meant to be like this. I did love Jimmy, but I can’t be too sorry, darling, because now I’m here with you.’

‘I don’t think you should talk about Jimmy like that, Georgie. Come on, let’s get home.’

‘We’ll go home, Edmund, if you like. But that’s what you have to understand, darling. There’s nothing either of us can do to change it.’

That evening, I was sitting on my bench in the churchyard watching the sunset over the estuary. I thought about what Georgie said, ‘There’s nothing either of us can do to change it,’ and it seemed to me that that was the whole problem. Because all my life, since I was a child, I’ve been in a fog, a great big pea souper. I can’t see where I’m going—I can’t do anything—I can’t change anything. All my life. I was no good in the army, no good at my work, no good at anything. Useless, completely and utterly useless. I think I felt more lonely sitting on that bench than at any other time in my life. There was no one I could talk to—even Louisa wouldn’t have understood. If I’d gone to her and said, ‘I’m useless,’ she would have lied to me, even Louisa; she’d have told me it wasn’t true. Because you’d have to say that, wouldn’t you?

I wanted to smoke, but when I put my hand in my overcoat pocket for my cigarette case there was something big and lumpy in there instead. I fished this thing out to look at it—it was one of the guinea pigs in cricketing flannels from the tableau. Georgie’d taken it. She’d stolen a bloody
stuffed guinea pig.
I suppose some
people might have thought that was funny—perhaps it
was
funny—but to me it suddenly seemed like absolutely the last straw. I got up and walked out into the water and flung this thing away from me as far as I could into the estuary. I thought, I’ll go after it. I’ll go out there and the water will swallow me up, and that’ll be the end of it. I felt so alone, so… closed off from the rest of the world, somehow, as if I were already dead, sealed up in a chamber with this fog all around me…

I don’t know why I stopped. I think it was the reeds catching round my legs. I looked down and saw that my trousers were sodden, my overcoat was trailing in the water. I sort of came out of it a bit then and thought about Louisa, and what she would think… then I went back to the house.

I never went near the trial. I didn’t want to hear Miss Georgina’s and Mr. James’s private business told in front of every Tom, Dick, and Harry. Mrs. Seddon had to give evidence, but it was only about who was in the house and what Mr. James said about locking the doors, and she said they were respectful to her, which was something. She told me that the gallery was stuffed with every journalist and nosy parker you could think of, with nothing better to do than mind somebody else’s business.

Young Mr. Gresham that inherited the house, Mr. Leo, he didn’t keep it long. He never lived there, just put it up for sale, lock, stock, and barrel. Couldn’t wait to get it off his hands, but there weren’t too many wanted a big place like that—even if it hadn’t had its name all over the papers—although I don’t doubt there were lots that wanted to get a look inside it because of what they’d read. I missed the space, when we moved in here, and most of all I missed the light. When I first came here, I went down to the basement, and it seemed so dark and poky—I thought: Well, this is where you’ll be stopping for the rest of your days, Ada, and I tell you I felt so miserable I could have cried. But you can get used to anything in time and at least we weren’t bombed out like some poor souls.

Hope House was eventually sold to a school and as
far as I know it’s still there. I thought Miss Georgina would be upset to be turned out of her home, but she didn’t seem to mind it and neither did Master Edmund. The night before those policemen came was the last night Miss Georgina ever spent at Hope House. Mr. Leo said she wasn’t to come back ever again and anyway, Miss Louisa had arranged for her and Master Edmund to go into the country for a rest. Mr. Leo paid off all the staff, all but me and Miss Jones, and we had a job and a half on our hands trying to sort everything out, I can tell you. Miss Jones had to be let go because Miss Georgina and Master Edmund barely had enough to pay my wage, let alone any other. Since the war there’s not been even that, but you’ve got to take as you find, haven’t you? And I’ve got my little bit that I’ve saved up over the years, so we’re not ready for the poor-house yet.