The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton (37 page)

His rooms were stuffy. He went round and threw open all the windows. He made himself some tea and taking his cup to his desk, he slit open his letters with his paper knife. He had not bothered to arrange for them to be forwarded to Easton Deadall, knowing he would return regularly.

One was an invitation to a gaudy at Oriel, his old Oxford college. Three years ago he would not have considered it; the idea of a feast, where so many of the faces from his cohort were missing, would have seemed entirely melancholy, but now he thought he might go. He still knew several of the dons; one, indeed, had been a contemporary, and three or four old Westminster boys, taught by him, were now undergraduates.

He felt his spirits rise as he opened the next envelope with its ebullient, but rather childish writing. It had been franked in France and was from his oldest friend, Charles Carfax. The wealthy but rather idle Charles was currently in the Hotel Bristol at Le Touquet with his car, the love of his life. Rather like a man hopelessly smitten with a temperamental and demanding mistress, for Charles the unreliability of his car and its constant need for a mechanic’s care seemed to be part of its attraction.

The last letter was from Mary. He had all her letters; although he had never told her this, even the ones written in her unhappiness after her brother’s death, three years ago. For a while they had written quite often, but slowly the letters became fewer, though still as warm. When he finally opened the most recent, he held it for a second before reading it.

10 Warkworth Street,
Cambridge, 16 July

Dearest Laurie,

I hope your stay with the Bolithos’ friends has been jolly. I could have written to you there addressing it to: Laurence Bartram, investigator of churches somewhere near Stonehenge. I’m sure it would have found you, but I prefer to be able to think of you somewhere I know—back home sitting at your old desk—because you will read it at your old desk, won’t you?

Or perhaps you’ll read it in bed, your very big for one, very small for two, bed. (Who do you think it was ever intended for?)

I think of those rooms as our small world. I think of them, and you, often. You don’t want me say ‘if only’ so I won’t.

As for me, well, you can see I am still here with Mother and Aunt Virginia. I don’t seem to have become that independent girl in London.

I have been down seeing Pip the last few days. He has been quite unwell and it was touch and go several times but at the minute it’s go, or as go as things can ever be with Pip. I stayed with his old doctor. Very decent people. Pip’s so thin now; you can see the skeleton within the man, and he has these sores on his heels and back. However wonderful the nuns are, I sometimes think his body is disintegrating. He smells—it’s not about washing or clean linen—he smells as if he is already dead. I couldn’t tell anybody but you.

What is the meaning of it all? What is his life? I can’t ask the nuns because they believe every life is sacred and suffering has purpose, and because he believed all that, he might still agree with them, but it is hard not to think how he would have hated all this. But he can neither believe nor hate, of course. Sometimes I’ve been beside him and I’ve thought, if I really loved him, I’d pick up a pillow and end it all now. Would they hang me, do you think? But then I realise it is all about my discomforts, not his. And he goes on all right at present.

Poor Pip.

And just a bit poor me. Am I allowed? I am sorry to be such a misery.

M.

He put the letter down. He had started off by smiling, because he was indeed at his old desk, but his brief pleasure in her proprietorial take on his rooms, and her sense of humour, was soon dispelled by her news of Pip’s condition. That, in turn, was superseded, fleetingly, by hope: that Pip was finally dying and that Mary would be free. To his shock, he recognised his own disappointment, as he read on, that the man was again holding his own, and hated himself for it. For the first time, he knew that living like this, vaguely waiting for Mary, waiting for another’s death, couldn’t continue. It was not a question of trying to love someone else, it was finding his own way forward.

Chapter Nineteen

Everyone seemed in increasingly low spirits back at the Hall. The doctor had been and had provided morphine for Lydia. He had suggested her removal to a nursing home, but Frances had refused. The doctor said Lydia had days, at most, to live.

Patrick had struggled to shake off quite a severe chest infection since his immersion, while William was subdued and scarcely ever out of his office. Lydia was being nursed by all the women in rotation, day and night, but fatigue was beginning to tell in all of them. Julian sat by her bedside for hours but according to Susan, never said a thing.

Laurence began to wish he had delayed his return. After walking up to the village to give news of Jane to her relieved sister, he returned and sat in the library, reading. His clothes were damp. Rain had been falling off and on since breakfast; gusts of wind blew the roses against the library windows and scattered leaves down the terrace. As darkness fell, William had asked for a scratch supper in his office. He was leaving in two weeks, as soon as the new window was installed.

Laurence had gone down to see him, but a barrier had come up between them.

‘Are you managing?’ Laurence had asked, but had received answers of unconvincing good cheer.

‘Frantically busy,’ William had said eventually, making it clear he wanted to be alone.

Susan had cooked and for once it was an excellent dinner but Frances ate her supper quickly and returned upstairs. Patrick went up after one glass of port. Julian drank his way through most of a bottle of claret by himself.

Laurence went to the kitchen to thank Susan. She was washing up and looked tired.

‘David’s coming up for me with an umbrella,’ she said.

‘Your St Swithin let us down.’

‘My David says it’s all for the best,’ she said. ‘It’s a blessing for the maze and the fish in the Kennet, and we’ve got the electric back on too.’

He went and sat in the library again. The day seemed interminable: it was still only just after nine-thirty. He didn’t hear Julian come in until he sat down heavily in a chair, holding a glass of port.

‘Poor Lydia,’ Julian said, looking round vaguely.

Laurence sensed that for Julian too the news of her real medical condition was recent.

‘I wish she’d never set eyes on Easton.’ His voice was very slightly slurred.

Laurence didn’t think an answer was expected, but he put down his book.

‘There were only two things I ever loved,’ Julian said. ‘I loved Lydia, who was Digby’s, and I loved Easton. And that was Digby’s too.’ He seemed to consider what he’d just said. ‘It sounds foolish probably but I always thought that if I’d been her husband, if we’d had a daughter, nothing would ever have harmed her. Nobody would have taken her. But with Digby...’ It occurred to Laurence how often at Easton conversations about Digby petered out into nothing.

‘She didn’t love me. Even after Digby’d gone.’

Julian contorted his features into an unconvincing smile and Laurence noticed how he’d already slipped into the past tense when talking of his sister-in-law.

‘I know that. She never had feelings for me. I’m too solid. Too dull. And she had money—younger sons don’t get the rich girls, they get the sensible ones. But I never wanted anyone else.’

He fell silent again. After a few minutes he said, ‘Perhaps I made a fool of myself—I know they all gossip about it. But it’s too late now. She’s failing ... this illness...’

‘The first time she came to Easton, she and Digby were about to announce their engagement. I’d met her at a dance the year before but she’d forgotten. They’d met in London. We had a London house then. Let it go when my father died. My father had been introduced to her at the house of the American ambassador. Not my father’s sort of thing at all, but I suppose Digby wanted them to see what a match he had in mind. Then she arrived at Easton. So pretty. A lovely smile—she seemed happy all the time. So did Digby. Father invited round what passed for local society to meet her and to show them how well Digby had done for himself. The local families pronounced her charming, although I expect there was some whispering about her smart clothes—she’d only ever lived in cities: New York, Paris, London.

‘Two days before the wedding, Patrick, Digby and I went up to town to celebrate. It was supposed to be just a dinner, but Patrick wanted to go to see Maskelyne and Devant at the Egyptian Hall.’

He paused as if he wasn’t sure if Laurence knew who Maskelyne was.

‘Magic.’

‘I took my wife to one of his shows just before the war,’ Laurence said.

The surfacing memory startled him. The war had made old, uncomfortable memories almost irrelevant, but now he remembered Louise’s excitement and fear. She was young, they were both young, but Louise was always superstitious and she more or less believed in the spectacle that unfolded on stage. At the same time her conventional upbringing left her feeling she was indulging in something risqué, merely by sitting in the audience.

Julian looked surprised, either at being interrupted or at discovering Laurence had been married. Was it possible no one had told him? Laurence rather imagined everybody spoke of it behind his back, as much to protect him as to pass on gossip.

Julian shrugged. Whatever legerdemain Maskelyne had pulled off in front of the Easton brothers that night, it evidently wasn’t the dominating memory of Julian’s evening. He got up and took Laurence’s glass without asking if he wanted it filled. Carrying it with his own over to the drinks tray, he reached for the decanter.

With one of the rare recollections of absolute clarity, Laurence had a picture of Louise as she had been that night. She was in dark blue, he thought, with black frogging on her hat and coat. She wasn’t wearing gloves. They were newly engaged to be married and she abandoned her gloves whenever possible to admire the rather small diamond ring on her left hand, moving it so that its facets caught the light. But what he remembered most was how her eyes shone and, when the naphtha lights were extinguished, how she clutched his arm. The theatre was airless, the seats cramped, and she undid her coat buttons. Louise’s perfume was sweet and flowery but as she moved closer he could also detect a trace of sweat, which somehow excited him. He was conscious of her softness as she leaned against his upper arm. They were surrounded by couples just like them and the theatre was alive with a mood of anticipation. The man next to him smelled strongly of beer and shouted suggestions to the performers on stage: ‘Behind the curtain,’ or ‘It’s in the other pocket.’

Julian returned holding their drinks and set one down by Laurence. He settled himself back in his chair for a minute without speaking, then rose to put some wood on the fire. He seemed restless. He walked to the window and stared out, though there could be nothing to see so late on a moonless night. He seemed to have lost the thread of his story.

Laurence was struggling with his own memories. How could he have forgotten that evening for so long? Maskelyne made claims only to devising extraordinary delusions; he had devoted so much of his career to unmasking frauds and mediums. Yet Louise was quite capable of believing the scene enacted for them as the curtain rose again.

A young artist sat at his easel. He wiped a tear from his eye as he gazed at the painting of a beautiful girl on a swing. He was clearly a widower. Louise, at Laurence’s side, held his arm a little tighter. Finding his work too painful to continue, the artist laid down his palette and brushes, pulled a curtain over his canvas, sat back wearily in his chair and fell asleep.

Suddenly an angel appeared. Laurence had observed that she was a very shapely angel in gauzy, almost transparent draperies. Her swan’s wings beat gently. The angel drew back the curtain and the previously inanimate canvas came to life. Louise gave a little gasp. A living, breathing young woman slid off the swing and stepped down from the canvas. Tiny lights played on her golden hair. Her footsteps were silent as she crossed to her sleeping husband. She placed a hand on his cheek and, with an expression of ineffable sadness, kissed him. The angel looked on benevolently, her hands clasped in a position of prayer. Then the girl turned almost immediately and returned once more into the picture. The angel drew the curtain in front of it again just as the artist stirred.

The young man woke with a look of joy, jumped to his feet and ripped the curtain aside, but there was only his lifeless painting. As the desperate artist covered the canvas with kisses, the young woman reappeared. The lights had altered, Laurence recalled, so that she appeared to be insubstantial. When the artist clutched at her draperies, his hands appeared to snatch at nothing; she had disappeared into thin air. The curtain came down as the artist fell to his knees.

Beside him, Louise sniffed and took a small handkerchief out of her bag. Tears were running down her cheeks. A woman behind them was weeping more loudly.

They had gone back to the Chelsea house of Louise’s aunt and uncle. Louise was quiet. She sniffed occasionally but she still held closely to him. Part of him knew she had a streak of ridiculous sentimentality but a greater part of him responded to her vulnerability. When they left the theatre, two drunks had nearly bumped into them. One was singing ‘Our Lodger’s a Nice Young Man’. He’d looked Louise up and down, said ‘Very nice’ in mid-song and muttered something to his friend. Both men had laughed. Laurence had been aware that Louise’s relatives would not have thought Maskelyne an improving entertainment and wondered if he could ask her not to speak of it.

He was relieved when the maid who let them in told them their hosts were still out at dinner. When the maid retired, Laurence poured them two drinks. Louise’s was Madeira, he thought. Unused to spirits, Louise drank it still standing, almost in a single go. His own brandy burned his throat. They were both still on their feet, close together but not touching. As he took the glass from her, he saw them both reflected in the vast mirror over the console table. The effect of seeing himself with her—one image, his height, her slightness, his face in the light, hers in the darkness, their shoulders only inches apart—was arousing. Here was a portrait of a man and his wife. A man and his property.