The Face of a Stranger (42 page)

It was an idle question, since Hester was still standing.

Absently she pulled the end. "It isn't vanity," she said,
still referring to Miss Wentworth. "It's survival. What is the poor
creature to do if she doesn't marry? Her mother and sisters have convinced her
the only alternative is shame, poverty and a lonely and pitiful old age."

"That reminds me," Imogen said, pushing her boots off.
"Have you heard from Lady Callandra's hospital yet? I mean the one you
want to administer."

"I don't aim quite so high; I merely want to assist," Hester
corrected.

"Rubbish!" Imogen stretched her feet luxuriously and sank a
little further into the chair. "You want to order around the entire
staff."

The maid came in and stood waiting respectfully.

"Lemonade, please, Martha," Imogen ordered. "I'm so hot I
could expire. This climate really is ridiculous. One day it rains enough to
float an ark, the next we are all suffocated with heat."

"Yes ma'am. Would you like some cucumber sandwiches as well, ma'am?"

"Oh yes. Yes I would—thank you."

"Yes ma'am." And with a whisk of skirts she was gone.

Hester filled the few minutes while the maid was absent with trivial
conversation. She had always found it easy to talk to Imogen and their
friendship was more like that of sisters than of two women related only by
marriage, whose patterns of life were so different. When Martha had brought the
sandwiches and lemonade and they were alone, she turned at last to the matter
which was pressing so urgently on her mind.

"Imogen, that policeman, Monk, was here again yesterday—"

Imogen's hand stopped in the air, the sandwich ignored, but there was
curiosity in her face and a shadow of amusement. There was nothing that looked
like fear. But then Imogen, unlike Hester, could conceal her feelings perfectly
if she chose.

"Monk? What did he want this time?"

"Why are you smiling?"

"At you, my dear. He annoys you so much, and yet I think part of
you quite likes him. You are not dissimilar in some ways, full of impatience at
stupidity and anger at injustice, and perfectly prepared to be as rude as you
can."

"I am nothing like him whatever," Hester said impatiently.
"And this is not a laughing matter." She could feel an irritating
warmth creep up in her cheeks. Just once in a while she would like to take more
naturally to feminine arts, as Imogen did as easily as breathing. Men did not
rush to protect her as they did Imogen; they always assumed she was perfectly
competent to take care of herself, and it was a compliment she was growing
tired of.

Imogen ate her sandwich, a tiny thing about two inches square.

"Are you going to tell me what he came for, or not?"

"Certainly I am." Hester took a sandwich herself and bit into
it; it was lacily thin and the cucumber was crisp and cool. "A few weeks
ago he had a very serious accident, about the time Joscelin Grey was
killed."

"Oh—I'm sorry. Is he ill now? He seemed perfectly recovered."

"I think his body is quite mended," Hester answered, and
seeing the sudden gravity and concern in Imogen's face felt a gentleness
herself. "But he was struck very severely on the head, and he cannot
remember anything before regaining his senses in a London hospital."

"Not anything." A flicker of amazement crossed Imogen's fece.
"You mean he didn't remember me—I mean us?"

"He didn't remember himself," Hester said starkly. "He
did not know his name or his occupation. He did not recognize his own face when
he saw it in the glass."

"How extraordinary—and terrible. I do not always like myself
completely—but to lose yourself! I cannot imagine having nothing at all left of
all your past—all your experiences, and the reason why you love or hate
things."

"Why did you go to him, Imogen?"

"What? I mean, I beg your pardon?"

"You heard what I said. When we first saw Monk in St. Marylebone
Church you went over to speak to him. You knew him. I assumed at the time that
he knew you, but he did not. He did not know anyone."

Imogen looked away, and very carefully took another sandwich.

"I presume it is something Charles does not know about,"
Hester went on.

"Are you threatening me?" Imogen asked, her enormous eyes
quite frank.

"No I am not!" Hester was annoyed, with herself for being
clumsy as well as Imogen for thinking such a thing. "I didn't know there
was anything to threaten you with. I was going to say that unless it is
unavoidable, I shall not tell him. Was it something to do with Joscelin
Grey?"

Imogen choked on her sandwich and had to sit forward sharply to avoid
suffocating herself altogether.

“No,'' she said when at last she caught her breath. “No it was not. I
can see that perhaps it was foolish, on reflection. But at the time I really
hoped—"

"Hoped«what? For goodness sake, explain yourself."

Slowly, with a good deal of help, criticism and consolation from
Hester, Imogen recounted detail by detail exactly what she had done, what she
had told Monk, and why.

* * * * *

Four hours later, in the golden sunlight of early evening, Hester stood
in the park by the Serpentine watching the light dimple on the water. A small
boy in a blue smock carrying a toy boat under his arm passed by with his
nursemaid. She was dressed in a plain stuff dress, had a starched lace cap on
her head and walked as uprightly as any soldier on parade. An off-duty bandsman
watched her with admiration.

Beyond the grass and trees two ladies of fashion rode along Rotten Row,
their horses gleaming, harnesses jingling and hooves falling with a soft thud
on the earth.

Carriages rattling along Knightsbridge towards Piccadilly seemed in
another world, like toys in the distance.

She heard Monk's step before she saw him. She turned when he was almost
upon her. He stopped a yard away; their eyes met. Lengthy politeness would be
ridiculous between them. There was no outward sign of fear in him— his gaze
was level and unflinching—but she knew the void and the imagination that was
there.

She was the first to speak.

"Imogen came to you after my father's death, in the rather fragile
hope that you might discover some evidence that it was not suicide. The family
was devastated. First George had been killed in the war, then Papa had been
shot in what the police were kind enough to say might have been an accident,
but appeared to everyone to be suicide. He had lost a great deal of money.
Imogen was trying to salvage something out of the chaos—for Charles's sake, and
for my mother's." She stopped for a moment, trying to keep her composure,
but the pain of it was still very deep.

Monk stood perfectly still, not intruding, for which she was grateful.
It seemed he understood she must tell it all without interruption in order to
be able to tell it at all.

She let out her breath slowly, and resumed.

"It was too late for Mama. Her whole world had collapsed. Her
youngest son dead, financial disgrace, and then her husband's suicide—not only
his loss but the shame of the manner of it. She died ten days later—she was
simply broken—" Again she was obliged to stop for several minutes. Monk
said nothing, but stretched out his hand and held hers, hard, firmly, and the
pressure of his fingers was like a lifeline to the shore.

In the distance a dog scampered through the grass, and a small boy
chased a penny hoop.

"She came to you without Charles's knowing—he would not have
approved. That is why she never mentioned it to you again—and of course she did
not know you hadj forgotten. She says you questioned her about everything that

had happened prior to Papa's death, and on successive meetings you asked
her about Joscelin Grey. I shall tell you what she told me—"

A couple in immaculate riding habits cantered down the Row. Monk still
held her hand.

"My family first met Joscelin Grey in March. They had none of them
heard of him before and he called on them quite unexpectedly. He came one
evening. You never met him, but he was very charming—even I can remember that from
his brief stay in the hospital where I was in Scutari. He went out of his way
to befriend other wounded men, and often wrote letters for those too ill to do
it for themselves. He often smiled, even laughed and made small jokes. It did
a great deal for morale. Of course his wound was not as serious as many, nor
did he have cholera or dysentery."

Slowly they began to walk, so as not to draw attention to themselves,
close together.

She forced her mind back to that time, the smell, the closeness of pain,
the constant tiredness and the pity. She pictured Joscelin Grey as she had last
seen him, hobbling away down the steps with a corporal beside him, going down
to the harbor to be snipped back to England.

"He was a little above average height," she said aloud.
"Slender, rair-haired. I should think he still had quite a limp—I expect
he always would have had. He told them his name, and that he was the younger
brother of Lord Shelburne, and of course that he had served in the Crimea and
been invalided home. He explained his own story, his time in Scutari, and that
his injury was the reason he had delayed so long in calling on them.''

She looked at Monk's face and saw the unspoken question.

"He said he had known George—before the battle of the Alma, where
George was killed. Naturally the whole family made him most welcome, for
George's sake, and for his own. Mama was still deeply grieved. One knows with
one's mind that if young men go to war there is always a chance they will be
killed, but that is nothing like a preparation for the feelings when it
happens. Papa had his loss, so Imogen said, but for Mama it was the end of
something Jerribly precious. George was the youngest son and she always had a
special feeling for him. He was—" She struggled with memories of childhood
like a patch of sunlight in a closed garden. "He looked the most like
Papa—he had the same smile, and his hair grew the same way, although it was
dark like Mama's. He loved animals. He was an excellent horseman. I suppose it
was natural he should join the cavalry.

"Anyway, of course they did not ask Grey a great deal about George
the first time he called. It would have been very discourteous, as if they had
no regard for his own friendship, so they invited him to return any time he
should find himself free to do so, and would wish to—"

"And he did?" Monk spoke for the first time, quietly, just an
ordinary question. His face was pinched and there was a darkness in his eyes.

"Yes, several times, and after a while Papa finally thought it
acceptable to ask him about George. They had received letters, of course, but
George had told them very little of what it was really like." She smiled
grimly. "Just as I did not. I wonder now if perhaps we both should have?
At least to have told Charles. Now we live in different worlds: And I should
be distressing him to no purpose."

She looked beyond Monk to a couple walking arm in arm along the path.

"It hardly matters now. Joscelin Grey came again, and stayed to
dinner, and then he began to tell them about the Crimea. Imogen says he was
always most delicate; he never used unseemly language, and although Mama was
naturally terribly upset, and grieved to hear how wretched the conditions
were, he seemed to have a special sense of how much he could say without
trespassing beyond sorrow and admiration into genuine horror. He spoke of
battles, but he told them nothing of the starvation and the disease. And

he always spoke so well of George, it made them all proud to hear.

"Naturally they also asked him about his own exploits. He saw the
Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava. He said the courage was sublime:
never were soldiers braver or more loyal to their duty. But he said the
slaughter was the most dreadful thing he had ever seen, because it was so
needless. They rode right into the guns; he told them that." She shivered
as she remembered the cartloads of dead and wounded, the labor all through the
night, the helplessness, all the blood. Had Joscelin Grey felt anything of the
overwhelming emotions of anger and pity that she had?

"There was never any chance whatsoever that they could have
survived,'' she said quietly, her voice so low it was almost carried away by
the murmur of the wind. "Imogen said he was very angry about it. He said
some terrible things about Lord Cardigan. I think that was the moment I most
thought I should have liked him."

Deeply as it hurt, Monk also most liked him for it. He had heard of that
suicidal charge, and when the brief thrill of admiration had passed, he was
left with a towering rage at the monumental incompetence and the waste, the personal
vanity, the idiotic jealousies that had uselessly, senselessly squandered so
many lives.

For what, in heaven's name, could he have hated Joscelin Grey?

She was talking and he was not listening. Her face was earnest, pinched
for the loss and the pain. He wanted to touch her, to tell her simply,
elementally, without words that he felt the same.