Two for Sorrow (24 page)

‘I'm not entirely without ties, you know. I can't just up and leave Inverness—there's my father to think about, and a house to look after. I have responsibilities.'

‘Responsibilities, yes, but not duties—that's the difference. And from what I've seen, you fulfil those responsibilities on your terms. It's a lot to give up, whether Lydia's in the picture
or not. I'm not surprised you're complacent in matters of the heart.'

‘Is that what I am?' Josephine gave a wry smile, which Gerry returned in kind.

‘That's the nicest way of putting it.'

‘You're right, of course. It's the marriage thing that scares me to death—the day-to-day with someone, the wretched domesticity of it all, the constant demands on each other.' Gerry started to laugh at the horror in her voice, but Josephine had only just begun. ‘And the conversation—my God, the conversation. Can you imagine how exhausting it must be to find things to say for a lifetime? Or the effort it takes to be interesting every night at dinner? I don't know that I want that, with a man or a woman. It doesn't fit in with my life.' Satisfied that she had made her point, she spoke more seriously. ‘I'll never forget what someone said during the war when I was at Anstey—it's a physical training college just outside Birmingham.'

‘Yes, I know of it,' Gerry said quickly. ‘I didn't realise you were there, though—not until the other night when I heard you talking to Bannerman. I didn't know she was connected with it, either.'

‘It was a long time ago now, and she's done such a lot in between—I don't suppose it seems that important to her any more. But it was Celia Bannerman who said it, actually. She called us all together one day—Jack was already dead by then and nearly every girl was wearing mourning for a member of her family—and told us very gravely that only one in ten of us would marry. The rest would have to make their way in the world as best they could, because nearly all the men who might have married us had been killed. It should have been a terrible
moment for all the girls in that room, but I remember looking round at them and wondering—was it just me who felt relieved?'

‘Relieved? Even though you'd lost someone you loved?'

‘Yes. Shameful, isn't it? I didn't dare admit it to anyone at the time, and it didn't change the grief I felt for Jack's loss or the anger at the injustice of it all, but it was definitely relief. Selfish, perhaps, but it suddenly felt like a life full of possibilities and free of obligation. And I suppose that's always been the greatest achievement for me—earning the right not to do something I don't want to do. Everybody's continually telling me that I should be writing more plays, building on last year's success—but the fact is that I don't much feel like it at the moment and I don't need to do it, so I choose not to. And there's no one at home to convince me I'm wrong.'

‘I can't decide if you're a traitor to your sex or a role model for us all. Most women complain that marriage
stops
them working, not that it forces them into it.'

Josephine laughed. ‘It's funny you should say that. Marta once told me that a woman's entitled to both these days—work and love. I'm not particularly diligent with either. I'm sure I'd be a terrible disappointment if she really got to know me.'

‘I doubt that,' Geraldine said, seeing straight through the lightness of the comment, ‘but it's natural to be terrified of failure.' Josephine felt herself redden. ‘Being adored, as you put it, creates a lot to live up to. That brings me back to my original point, though. Money makes you lazy, and independence makes you lonely.'

‘You? Lonely?' she said, skilfully deflecting the attention from herself. ‘From what I hear, you can turn even a charity dress fitting into an opportunity for seduction.'

‘You're not fooled by all that bravado, surely? I have to drink to keep that up.' Once again, Josephine was struck by how quickly Gerry's moods changed. ‘Someone once told me I was too rich to care, you know,' she admitted. ‘I argued at the time, but I'm not so sure that I haven't proved her right over the years.'

Josephine stirred more sugar into a cold cup of coffee, sensing that she wasn't the only one who needed to talk. ‘Someone who mattered?'

‘Oh yes, she mattered. At eighteen, people matter very much, don't they?'

‘You were thinking about her the other night in the bar.'

‘I think about her a lot when I'm here. She wanted to be a nurse like her mother.'

‘Who was she?' Josephine asked, wondering if the past tense which they had both slipped into was down to a broken love affair or to something more tragic.

‘She's the reason I've been wanting to get you on your own since Thursday evening.' The offer of a drink then had been casually expressed, as Josephine recalled, but perhaps she had been too preoccupied with her work and her eagerness to see Archie to notice that Geraldine wasn't simply being friendly. ‘She was a girl I grew up with—I suppose I must have met her for the first time when I was five or six, but I honestly don't remember a time when she wasn't around. She came to live with our housekeeper down in Sussex. Her mother had died and her father couldn't raise her for some reason, so Mrs Price adopted her when she was four. She and her husband had been trying for a child for years without any luck, and my mother had her nose in a number of charitable causes, so she had no trouble laying her hands on a waif and stray to keep in with
the servants.' Her voice had taken on a hard, unforgiving edge, and Josephine had no doubt that Gerry blamed her mother for whatever had gone wrong in her life. ‘God, Josephine, those years felt like one long, glorious summer's day. I'd always taken my home for granted, but she'd come from London and, as we grew up, I saw it through her eyes—the parkland and the woods, even the sky was different, and it all seemed to belong to us. We used to dream about the day when it would just be the two of us there—no parents, no servants, just us in the world.' She laughed to herself. ‘The laws of inheritance and the workings of the English class system have never been my strong points. She was beautiful, though—so wilful and independent that I believed anything was possible. It's funny—we laughed about my eye for an opportunity, but that Motley girl reminds me of her in some ways. She has the same spirit as Lizzie.'

‘Lizzie?'

‘Yes. The other night I found out that you knew her.'

Josephine was stunned. ‘Oh God, Gerry—I'm so sorry. She was at Anstey. Elizabeth Price …'

‘Elizabeth Sach, as it turned out.'

‘Please tell me you didn't find that out from what I said.'

‘No, no, I've known about that for years. I knew before she died.' Gerry reached across and squeezed her hand. ‘Look, Josephine, I haven't brought this up to make you feel bad. How were you to know? But hearing her name like that just brought it all back, and I wanted to talk to you—to explain what really happened and to find out if there's anything else you can tell me. Nobody would speak to me about her time at Anstey, but I'd trust you to be honest.'

Josephine nodded. ‘I'll tell you as much as I can. But what did really happen?'

‘The usual stuff at first. It was fine for me to run wild with the servants' daughter as long as everyone thought I'd grow out of it, but class kicked in when we were teenagers. By the time she was sixteen and I was about to turn eighteen, an embarrassment had become a problem. My mother decided it was time for us to be separated, so she got together with some do-gooding acquaintance of hers—Bannerman, I now realise—and arranged for Lizzie to go to Birmingham. There was no room for argument.'

‘That must have felt like the end of the world,' Josephine said. ‘For you, obviously, but especially for her. I can still remember the shock of Birmingham after the Highlands. It was wartime as well, of course, which made things even grimmer. I longed for the air at Blair Atholl, and all I got was the smell of Kynoch's steelworks.' Gerry smiled. ‘It's funny, no one seems to recognise how paralysing homesickness can be, but to my mind there's no stronger emotion. I was devastated for weeks, and that was just for a place; I wasn't leaving someone behind—in fact, my best friend from school went to Anstey with me—so it must have been so much worse for Lizzie.'

‘We had a terrible row before she went. She blamed me for allowing it to happen—that's where the “too rich to care” comment came in. I'd never realised before that the class thing had seeped into our relationship, as well, but I suppose it's so much easier to be oblivious to all that when you're the one with the house and the money. Anyway, I was determined to prove her wrong, so I went to Paris with ten pounds in my pocket and drove ambulances for the Red Cross.' She reached for another cigarette, but the case was empty and Josephine pushed her own across the table. ‘I couldn't wait to get out of
the place. It was as if Lizzie had packed up all its magic and taken it with her.'

‘Did you know all along who she was and what had happened to her mother?'

‘No. My mother knew, and the Prices, of course, but that was as far as it was supposed to go. I would never have found out if I hadn't forced the issue.'

‘In what way?'

‘Oh, blame it on Paris.' Josephine looked curious. ‘It was terrible in so many ways,' she explained. ‘The city was bombed and people were dying in the streets, but we helped them, too, and there was nothing more exhilarating than saving a life. It made me think I could do anything; if I could stop people dying, I could certainly make a life for myself and Lizzie there, whether I had my parents' support or not. So I came home and told my mother what I was going to do when the war ended. By that time, Lizzie would have finished at Anstey and we could be together. She could have nursed and I—well, I would have found something to do to make a living.'

‘And that's when your mother told you?'

‘Yes. For some reason, she thought it would change my mind and put an end to the matter. And I suppose, to her credit, it did—but not in the way she intended.'

‘You told Lizzie what had happened to her mother, didn't you?'

Gerry nodded. ‘It was my fault that she killed herself. I wrote to her straight away. I was so angry, Josephine—I'd always been brought up to believe that birthright was everything. My parents had shoved a long line of distinguished Ashbys down my throat from the moment I was old enough to understand, and here they were, trying to deny Lizzie the
knowledge that was rightfully hers. It seemed so hypocritical to me at the time—actually, it still does. I know I'm all over the place and my life's a mess, but I've always known who I am and where I fit in. Everyone deserves that much, at least.' Josephine waited for her to continue, trying to imagine how she must have felt on Thursday evening as she listened to her past being reworked by two comparative strangers, neither of whom had the slightest idea what they were talking about emotionally. ‘I still think they were wrong not to tell her, but I wish I'd done it differently. I wish I'd waited to tell her myself rather than let her read it in a letter, but I underestimated the impact it would have. I honestly thought if I offered Lizzie a future that she could believe in, it would cease to matter where she came from.' She shook her head, as if she were still unable to believe her own naivety. ‘I was a stupid, arrogant little bitch and I thought I was enough for her. Not too rich to care, never that—but too rich to understand.'

Josephine tried to think of something to say that wasn't either patronising or clichéd. There was little point in reminding Gerry that nobody of that age could have been expected to deal with the situation any more successfully: too young to understand was no better than too rich. Gerry seemed to appreciate the honesty of her silence. ‘Tell me about her time at Anstey, Josephine,' she said quietly. ‘Anything you can remember. I know so little about the last few weeks of her life.'

How easily the scars of silence were passed on, Josephine thought: Elizabeth Sach had been denied the chance to come to terms with what her mother had done and, by taking her own life, had condemned someone who loved her to years of guilt and self-recrimination. ‘I didn't know her very well,
Gerry,' she said gently, wishing that she could find some small thing to ease the pain. ‘I was in my final year and she was in her first, and our paths didn't cross very often. I could tell you what the college was like, how she'd have spent her days, what she saw when she got up in the morning—but that's not what you want, is it?'

Gerry shook her head. ‘So you remember her for her death, and not her life.'

‘Yes, I suppose I do. And you've already heard everything I know about that, although I wish to God you hadn't.'

‘I could kill Bannerman for what she's done, you know—for meddling in Lizzie's life but not seeing the job through. I heard what she said to you about keeping an eye on her from time to time, but she wasn't there when it mattered, was she?'

‘She did what she thought was right.' It was said half-heartedly, and out of habitual rather than genuine loyalty; privately, Josephine shared Gerry's opinion of Celia Bannerman's fated interference.

‘And I suppose the college was paid handsomely for taking on a child killer's daughter.'