The Reckoning (27 page)

Miss Dauncey bit her lip. It seemed that another thought had just occurred to her, and Billy waited impatiently for her to share it with them.

‘It might be worth pointing out that initially I was surprised when I heard that Alma was set on going to boarding school. Given her spirit of independence, I would have thought she would have preferred the more relaxed regime she enjoyed at home. It was only later, after I had got to know them both a little better, that I realized she might have been seeking to escape from the rather claustrophobic atmosphere she'd grown up in.'

‘You're referring to the status Hazel had conferred on her husband?' Madden's sudden intervention took Billy by surprise. His old chief had been sitting silent for some time, motionless on the sofa beside him. ‘To the myth, as you called it, that she'd woven around him?'

‘That's exactly it.' She seemed pleased to be understood. ‘Hazel lived her life in hushed tones. She radiated a sense of loss and although, as I said, Alma was tremendously proud of her father, she had a spirit quite at odds with her mother's. I used to
wonder if some of her antics weren't a rebellion against that, just as I thought her taste for adventure was related in some way to her father's heroics.'

‘You felt she was trying to emulate him?'

‘In some sense. She wanted to live up to him and, given the way Hazel glorified his memory, that wasn't surprising. Alma chose to view life as a challenge. She couldn't wait to come to grips with it. That was how I saw her, at any rate, and later on I was proved right; up to a point, at least.'

She frowned.

‘But to get back to where I was: after Alma left school the question naturally came up of what she would do next. In spite of her sometimes erratic behaviour she'd performed well enough academically, particularly with regard to languages. But she had also shown some aptitude for art, and unfortunately that prompted Hazel to urge her to enrol at the Slade in London. She was sure Alma had inherited her father's talent.'

She sought Madden's eye.

‘I say “unfortunately” because in point of fact Hazel was quite wrong on both counts. I had seen enough of James's paintings – her house was full of them – to know that his gift had been minor. He painted prettily enough, seascapes mostly, the sort that people buy, and I dare say he would have enjoyed a perfectly successful career as a commercial painter. But that was the sum of it; and Alma's talent, such as it was, was even slighter, something that she had to acknowledge in time and which I feel was painful for her. In her own mind she had always been her father's daughter. After she left the Slade she continued to live in London – she found a job in an advertising agency and was sharing a flat with two other girls – but she used to come down to Richmond to see her mother, and around that time I began to notice a change in her manner. I'd always thought of her as a cheerful soul, certainly an optimistic one, but now I began to notice a darker side to her nature: swings of mood that were
quite extreme and would arrive without warning. I know Hazel was worried about her, and so was I. And there was something else that I, at any rate, found a little worrying.

‘Despite the time she had spent in London and the fact that she appeared to be behaving the way young girls behaved – going to parties, and so on – there seemed to be no young man in her life, nothing even approximating a boyfriend. Now I've dealt with enough young girls to know that not all of them mature at the same rate. But Alma was in her twenties by now and not unattractive to the opposite sex, yet she seemed to hold herself aloof, or at least to keep her distance from any sort of emotional entanglement, and I wondered why.'

She hesitated.

‘I don't claim any special insight – I'm not a psychologist – but I'd been able to observe Alma since early adolescence and I knew she was a romantic at heart. It's not uncommon with young girls, of course, but generally as they grow up and what we call real life begins to impose itself on them, they learn to modify their views and keep their dreams in perspective. But that change never occurred in Alma. She didn't grow up. That adventurous spirit I told you about, the image she had of her father, her willingness to break the rules – they all conspired to give her a picture of life that could never come up to her expectations. She'd become a fish out of water, poor girl, and I was starting to wonder where it would all end. She was still in that state, drifting and unhappy, when the war came.'

Miss Dauncey's voice had dropped as she spoke these last words and her visitors waited to see what the change of tone signified.

‘Most of us can probably remember how we felt then – at the very start, I mean, when we heard Chamberlain's announcement on the wireless. But I doubt many of us reacted the way Alma did. To her it came as a clarion call. She couldn't wait to enlist. From the first she thought of it as a great adventure, the kind
she had been waiting for, and nothing either her mother or I could say would dissuade her. I truly think she saw herself as following in her father's footsteps, living up to the example he had set. She joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force at the first opportunity and I remember the day she came down to Richmond in her new uniform. She was so proud. She had gone to a professional photographer in London to have her picture taken and she gave me a copy. Would you like to see it?'

Without waiting for a response Miss Dauncey rose and went to a cabinet on the far side of the room. Billy used the brief pause to glance at Madden, but on this occasion failed to catch his eye. His old mentor's attention had been drawn to one of the paintings hanging on a wall, a portrait of a girl with long fair hair, in her early teens perhaps, sitting on a swing with a puppy cradled in her arms.

‘Yes, that's Alma.' Returning with an album in her hands, their hostess had caught the direction of Madden's glance. ‘I painted it when she was fourteen, but I didn't make a very good job of it. The puppy was a present from her mother. This will give you a better idea of how she looked.'

She opened the album at a place she had marked with her finger and handed it to Billy, who held it on his knees so that Madden could see the photograph mounted on the page. Clearly the work of a professional, it showed a young woman dressed in WAAF uniform sitting straight-backed with her fair hair, cut short now, neatly tucked under her cap. Neither plain nor pretty, Alma Ballard would have gone unnoticed in a crowd, Billy thought, were it not for her expression, which was animated, and for the eager smile that lit up her face.

‘You can almost read her thoughts, can't you?' Miss Dauncey watched as they studied the picture. ‘She was longing to spring into action. Heaven knows what she imagined she'd be doing. Flying Spitfires, I shouldn't wonder. Poor Alma! She was always
running up against reality. Her languages proved to be her best asset. She spoke perfect French, of course – she'd grown up with it – and good German, too, which she'd learned at school. After basic training she was seconded to the Signals Corps and posted to a radio listening station at some godforsaken spot on the Norfolk coast. She used to come home for the odd weekend when she got leave, but it was as though all the life had been drained from her. I'd never seen her so miserable. Hazel was beside herself with worry. But then, just as we were beginning to despair, things changed for the better. Alma received a foreign posting; she was told she was being sent to the Middle East, and when she came down to Richmond to tell us the news I could see that the clouds had lifted. She was bubbling with excitement at the prospect. She couldn't wait to be on her way.'

Miss Dauncey reflected wryly on her words.

‘Well, I don't know how much excitement there was in being a cipher clerk in Cairo, which is what she was, but at least it was abroad and exotic and a long way from dreary Norfolk. And although Alma couldn't say much about it – I'm sure you recall how strict censorship was during the war – she never complained in the letters Hazel used to receive, on that awful tissue-like paper with whole lines blacked out, because some fact deemed to be classified had somehow found its way into Alma's chatter. They were usually just about the weather and the camels and expeditions to see the pyramids, but reading between the lines, it was obvious that she was much happier than she had been. And although Hazel missed her dreadfully, she was relieved by the letters' tone – we both were, though later I had cause to wonder what Alma had
not
been telling us.'

She eyed them meaningfully.

‘But to continue: she was away for more than a year. She left England towards the end of 1942 and came back a year and a half later. We had no advance word of her return. She simply
telephoned one day from some camp on the outskirts of London – it was late summer – and told her mother she was back. A few days later she came down to Richmond . . .'

Miss Dauncey swallowed. She seemed to hesitate.

‘Well, it was obvious to both Hazel and me that something had gone seriously wrong in her life. It wasn't that Alma was simply withdrawn: she seemed close to catatonic, almost unable to speak. She spent hours lying in bed in a darkened room and, when she did finally get up, she would either go off for long walks on her own or hire a rowing boat and drift down the river. I didn't dare say so to Hazel, but I began to fear for her state of mind – and her safety.'

She gnawed at her lip.

‘One hates to say it of another person, but at one stage I feared for her life. She had always been a person of extremes, and I was afraid she might take some . . . drastic action to free herself from her misery. What made it worse was that I felt I couldn't share my fears with Hazel.'

‘And yet you had no idea what was troubling her?' Madden's tone sounded a note of disbelief.

‘If you mean, had she told us – then no.' She looked at him. ‘But I had my suspicions. I was sure I knew what had brought poor Alma to this pass.'

‘And what was that?'

‘Why, a man of course.' Miss Dauncey spread her hands as though the answer was obvious. ‘Nothing else made sense. I told you how she had been earlier, the difficulty she found with that side of life. She was quite . . . inexperienced, in every sense of the word, when she left for Egypt. She had no idea how the game was played: she took nothing lightly. Of course I had no concrete information to go on, but there was little doubt in my mind as to what had happened to her in Egypt.'

‘And were you right?'

Again she hesitated.

‘Let me finish my story first.' She spoke after a long moment. ‘Then you can judge for yourselves.'

Watching her, Billy felt the tension rising in the room and saw from Madden's steady gaze, which was fixed unblinkingly on their hostess, that he too was waiting for the moment of truth to reveal itself.

‘Since returning from Cairo Alma had been filling some desk job at an RAF depot in Epsom.' Their hostess had composed herself again. ‘But early in 1945 she was demobilized and, instead of coming home to Richmond as Hazel had hoped, she took a flat in London and started looking for a job. Though I didn't dare say so, it looked to me as though she was drifting again – she seemed to have no purpose in life – and she still hadn't shaken off the black mood she had brought back with her from Egypt. Things went on like that for more than a year. Then, towards the end of last summer, she dropped her bombshell. She suddenly announced that she was going to emigrate to Canada, and when Hazel sought to change her mind, Alma said she didn't wish to live in England any longer; she was as blunt as that. “I hate this bloody country,” she said, and I don't know which of us was more shocked, Hazel or I. It wasn't the sort of thing Alma would ever have said in the past.

‘She began to plan her departure and started by consulting the Canadian High Commission about the procedures for immigration. There was no doubt that she was set on going, and her preparations were well advanced when Hazel fell ill. She had suffered for some years from heart trouble and when she finally went into hospital for a proper examination, it was found that she had occluded arteries: the blood supply to her heart was being blocked. Other than medication there was nothing the doctors could do: no operation was possible. It was by way of being a death-sentence, even if not an immediate one, and it fell to me to give Alma the sad news.'

Miss Dauncey sighed.

‘I have to confess I was worried about how she might respond – it would mean giving up, or at least postponing, her own plans – but I should have given her more credit. Whatever problems Alma might have had growing up, and however oppressed she must have felt from time to time by the pall Hazel had cast over her own life, she loved her mother deeply and didn't hesitate. She returned to Richmond at once to look after her. She even managed to shrug off her own depression, or at least mask it so that she could devote herself to Hazel. There was hardly a moment when they weren't together, and Alma spent hours putting her mother's affairs in order so that there would be nothing to worry her. She took care of the garden, too, though she had never shown any interest in it before, and as a result she and I also spent time together and I was struck by how calm she had become. All that inner turmoil had evaporated. It seemed she had come to terms with whatever it was that had given her such pain, and was ready to face life again. I can tell you, I sent up a prayer of thanks when I saw it: I knew how much it would help to ease Hazel's last months.'

She looked away.

‘She was starting to fail, poor dear. The simple act of breathing was becoming more and more difficult, and we had to keep an oxygen cylinder by her bed at all times. Alma had made up a bed in her mother's room. She wanted to be always on hand, but at the same time there was still some last-minute business of Hazel's to be sorted out – I'm afraid she was never a good administrator – and I can recall seeing Alma kneeling on the floor downstairs in their sitting room with piles of papers and documents around her, trying to make sense of them all. We both knew the moment was approaching – Hazel's doctor had told us it wouldn't be long – and, as people do in those circumstances, we kept ourselves as busy as possible. I had stopped teaching at St Mary's when the war ended, so I had plenty of
free time to go over there and sit with Hazel so that Alma could get some rest. And then something strange happened, something that was never fully explained.'