by Nicola Upson
Josephine lost all sense of time, but when they eventually broke apart, the rose tint in the western sky had faded. The long line of hills was slowly losing its natural tint and taking on the darker blues of the evening, and it seemed to her that everything was different, everything had changed. “Is this all right?” Jeannie asked.
Josephine smiled. “Can’t you tell?”
“Yes, I suppose I can.” She laughed softly and stroked Josephine’s cheek. “You’re obviously much braver than you give yourself credit for.”
She wasn’t brave at all, and too much thought about where this could lead and who might find out would have been enough to make her change her mind, but tonight—with the freedom of being so far from home and the unfamiliar thrill of this new love—it was easy to put her fears to one side and live for the moment. The moon was visible just above the hill now, waiting for the darkness which would give it its true glory, and only the faint but persistent rumbling of gunfire threatened the evening’s peace, striking such a jarring note that Josephine could easily have believed it was a figment of her imagination. “Are the guns always this loud?” she asked.
“It’s not just the guns.” Jeannie pointed to the sky above Firle, and this time the thunder was accompanied by a streak of lightning. “Something tells me we should make a dash for it.”
Josephine drew Jeannie close, breathing in the smell of summer on her skin, feeling her tremble a little as she kissed her neck, her shoulder, her throat. “I don’t want this to end,” she whispered.
“No, neither do I.”
The rain held off until they were on the outskirts of the village, but then the storm broke with a vengeance and they were glad for the canopy of trees, which gave them shelter as far as the inn. As they reached the van, the thunder vied for attention with a harsh cacophony of sound from the rooks overhead, and Josephine was astonished at how quickly the serenity of the day had disappeared. To her relief, Jeannie showed no sign of wanting to call in at the pub to say goodbye, apparently as eager as she was to preserve the illusion that the world really did exist for the two of them alone. All too soon, though, they were turning in off the main road, and the lights from the house shone dimly through the trees. “If we leave the van by the orchard, we should be able to sneak round the back without anyone knowing we’re home,” Jeannie said, reading her thoughts. She switched off the engine and turned to Josephine again, pulling her into a long, deep kiss. The rain hammered harder than ever on the roof of the van, and lightning forked the sky, and Josephine tried not to read a judgment into nature’s sense of timing.
Long before they reached the side path, they heard the ominous clamor of the bell. “What on earth’s going on?” Josephine asked, raising her voice so that Jeannie could hear her above the deluge.
“It must be a call to arms. This storm has come from nowhere. There’ll be things to put away and protect, and it’s all hands on deck—including ours, unfortunately.” She squeezed Josephine’s hand. “Just our luck. We’d better go and help, but it shouldn’t take long. Why don’t you go back to the van for a minute while I fetch some coats from the house?”
“I’m not sure there’s much point in sheltering,” Josephine said. “I’m already soaked through. Anyway, I need to check the cold frames. I left some of them open this morning, and I want to make sure that someone closed them at the end of the day.”
“All right. I won’t be a second.” Jeannie ran off through the greenhouses to the garden gate, and Josephine headed for the potting shed. The rain stung her hands and face, coming down with such ferocity that it felt like a thousand needles against her skin, but she was pleased to find that all the lids on the cold frames were down, and the plants had been properly protected. Behind her, she heard the creak of the garden gate but was too slow in turning to see if someone was coming or going; either way, there was still no sign of Jeannie. The bell had stopped ringing; in its place she could just make out George’s voice, shouting instructions from the walled garden, and she went over to help. Shadowy figures with lamps were moving round the vegetable plots, collecting tools or covering the most recently planted seedlings with sheets to prevent the rain from uprooting them, and she envied the girls their sou’westers and thick oilskin coats, buttoned high to the neck so that only the smallest of gaps was left to see through. She was about to pitch in when something made her glance back over her shoulder, and she noticed to her horror that several of the top windows were still open on the main greenhouse. Fearing for the damage she would find, and wondering who was responsible this time, Josephine turned back and ran toward the entrance, hoping to be in time to salvage something.
She heard the screams before she got there, rising high and shrill above the pounding of the rain. The door was wide open, and oil lamps lit at intervals threw out a soft, welcoming glow that jarred with the chilling sound of fear and despair. The greenhouse was long and narrow, with low walled beds on either side, and had been partitioned by more glass to form three separate houses. One of the girls was standing just beyond the first section, bending low over the flower bed on the right-hand side, and were it not for her obvious distress, Josephine could easily have believed that she was merely tending the plants. As she drew closer, she saw to her horror that the glass partition had been shattered. The girl turned toward her, and although her face was in shadow from the hood she wore, her words gave her identity away: “Please,” she begged, her voice hysterical with fear, “please help my sister.”
Dorothy Norwood lay on her side, surrounded by broken glass, and Josephine guessed that she had fallen from the low wall while she was reaching to close the windows in the roof; rain had soaked the bricks, leaving them perilously slippery, and one careless move in her panic to save the plants would have been enough to make her lose her footing. The greenhouse was unbearably hot, even with ventilation from above, and Dorothy’s heavy oilskin coat lay discarded on the floor, where she had presumably taken it off to complete her task more easily—a natural move, but one which had left her without any protection against the glass except for a thin cotton blouse. She was unconscious—Josephine’s mind refused to admit the possibility of anything worse—and her arms and face were covered in cuts of varying depths and sizes; most of the wounds looked superficial, but a quick glance was enough to suggest that two were potentially fatal. Dorothy’s right arm had taken the brunt of the impact as she put out her hand to save herself, and the glass had severed all the tendons; another shard—dagger-like in its shape and deadly effectiveness—was lodged in her neck.
“Move out of the way,” Josephine said, trying to keep the panic out of her voice, but Betty seemed incapable of understanding instructions, let alone following them. She began to scream again, and Josephine took her by the shoulders and half-helped, half-dragged her away from her sister. Fighting a wave of revulsion and nausea, she bent over Dorothy as the blood poured from the wound in her neck, matting her blonde hair in thick, viscous clumps and soaking into her blouse. Her pulse was weak, her face already pale and lifeless, and there was very little time left to save her. “Pass me that twine,” she shouted at Betty, but the girl was rooted to the spot, so Josephine fetched it herself, using a piece of the glass to cut a length off before tying it as tightly as she could around Dorothy’s upper arm. Still there was blood everywhere, refusing to be cleansed by the incoming rain, running in rivulets down the wall and into the metal drainage grille that ran the length of the floor, and covering Josephine’s hands and clothes until it seemed for a moment that she was viewing the whole world through a film of deathly red. She tore off her cardigan and pressed it to the girl’s neck, making sure not to touch the embedded glass, but in seconds the fine merino wool was drenched with blood. Her heart was beating so fast that it hurt her to breathe, pounding in her chest with tactless vigor as Dorothy’s life seeped inevitably away from her. She could have wept with fear and frustration. “How long has she been here like this?” she asked.
Betty’s answer wa
s only just audible above the pounding of the rain on the roof, coming down so hard that Josephine half-feared another shower of broken glass. “I don’t know,” she said. “That’s how I found her.”
“And when was that? Think, Betty!” The only response was a pathetic, forlorn whimper, like the cry of a helpless animal, and Josephine knew in her heart that it was too late; Dorothy had already lost far too much blood to live. “Go and fetch some help,” she screamed, finally giving in to her horror.
“What in heaven’s name is going on?” George stood at the entrance to the greenhouse, tearing off her oilskin, and Josephine saw the color drain from her face. “Good God, no,” she said, her voice low with shock. “Please tell me she hasn’t …”
She stopped, unable to say the word, and Josephine tried to explain. “She must have slipped off the wall and fallen through the glass while she was closing the windows. We need an ambulance.”
“But what was the stupid girl doing on the wall? Why didn’t she use the pole?”
George looked round, as if the missing implement were somehow the most urgent matter, and Josephine did her best to stay calm. “We need an ambulance,” she repeated firmly. “Someone needs to drive to the village to get help, and it has to be done now.”
She heard footsteps outside and looked at the door, praying that Jeannie would arrive in time to be sent to Firle, but it was Harriet, soaked through to the skin. “George? Oh my god, George, what have …” She trailed off, just as George had done, and the two women looked at each other for the briefest of seconds as an understanding passed between them. It was Harriet who regained her composure first. “I’ll go to the post office and telephone from there for an ambulance; then I’ll bring Dr. O’Brien back with me. The van’s not in the yard, though—is Jeannie still out?”
Josephine didn’t answer. She looked at Dorothy’s face, noticing a subtle but unmistakable change, and—although it was something that she had never seen before—she knew that this was death. The sharp, metallic smell of blood seemed to cling to her, mixed with the sickly sweet scent of hothouse lilies in full bloom, and it was all that she could do not to retch in horror and disgust. “It’s too late,” she said quietly, releasing the pressure on the girl’s neck. “Dorothy’s gone, Betty. I’m so sorry.”
Betty stared at her, then down at her sister’s body, and the expression of blank bewilderment gave way first to disbelief and finally to shock. Without warning, she launched herself at George, hitting out at her and screaming uncontrollably. “You fucking bitch! This is all your fault, and I’m going to make sure you pay!”
The tirade was a poignant echo of Betty’s recent anger toward her sister, and the words seemed to shake George more than the blows. She stood motionless, her hands by her sides, allowing Betty to vent her rage until Harriet pulled her away and calmed her down. “We’ll have to let someone know,” George said, and even her voice sounded older; in the few minutes since she had entered the greenhouse, Georgina Hartford-Wroe seemed to have added ten years to her age. “I’ll go to the village and telephone the police …”
“No,” Harriet objected, interrupting her. “I’ll send Vera to fetch Dr. O’Brien, and he can deal with the police. You and I are needed here, looking after the girls.” She paused, apparently recognizing the irony of what she had just said; on that score, she and George had fallen woefully short of their responsibilities. There was an air of fear and defeat about them both, as if they realized that this was the end of all their dreams. “The school will have to be told too, of course,” Harriet added. “They’ll want to notify Dorothy’s parents as soon as possible.”
At the mention of her parents, Betty began to sob—a violent, tortured sound that wracked her whole body but brought no tears. “They’ll blame me for this,” she said, choking on the words as she struggled to control herself. “I was only ever enough for them when they had Dorothy as well. It’s always been the same, and now she’s gone, they’ll resent me more than ever.” Josephine pitied her, but all the energy had drained from her body, and she couldn’t even summon the strength to go over and comfort her. Feeling suddenly faint, she sank back against the wall for support, longing for some fresh air to dispel the suffocating heat and the images now fixed so clearly in her mind that she doubted they would ever fade.
“Josephine? Jesus, what the hell has happened? Are you hurt?” Jeannie pushed past Harriet and Betty, oblivious in her panic to anything other than Josephine’s bloodstained clothes.
“I’m all right,” Josephine said, wanting to reassure her. Perhaps she was being oversensitive, but it seemed to her suddenly that Harriet was staring at them, as if she knew exactly what was going on. “It’s not me who’s hurt—it’s Dorothy. She’s had an accident. I tried to save her, but I couldn’t.” All the emotions that had been kept at bay until now were released by that one simple statement, and Josephine put her hands to her face and wept. Ashamed of the tears when the true grief belonged to someone else, she allowed Jeannie to put her arm around her and lead her out into the rain.
1938
CHAPTER 1
To Josephine’s relief, although the original Daily Mirror article had been picked up and reworked by other newspapers, no fresh revelations emerged to fan the flames, and she managed to avoid the handful of requests from journalists for a comment. With a bit of luck, Marta would be proved right, and the story would fade from view before it developed into a full-blown scandal. If she was ever to satisfy her own curiosity about those days, she needed to find out what had happened to the people involved; it seemed sensible to start at the source of the rumors, with Betty Norwood—or Elizabeth Banks as she now was. The Laughing Woman was due to open on the weekend, and Josephine’s days were taken up with final rehearsals and last-minute decisions over costumes and lighting, but Cambridge was close enough to London to get to an evening performance of The Children’s Hour, and it would make a refreshing change to sit in a theater without worrying about every single thing that happened on stage.
The Gate Theater Studio was on Villiers Street, underneath the arches and close to Charing Cross Station, and they arrived early. “Do you remember the last time we came down here together?” Marta asked as they walked along the Strand to pass the time.
“How could I forget?” She thought back to that cold March night, more than four years ago now, when she and Marta had only just met. A colleague of hers—the producer of her first play—had been murdered at the theater during a performance of Richard of Bordeaux, and Josephine, Marta, and another friend had walked through the London streets in the early hours of the morning, too shocked to go to bed and finding solace in one another’s company. She and Marta had been virtual strangers, with no hint of the love that would soon develop between them, but the emotions of the night had made the conversation more intimate than it might otherwise have been, and they had talked about the war and those who had been lost. Funny, she thought, that it should be those very same years that brought them back here today. “I remember telling you about Jack,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about him a lot lately.”
“That’s understandable. It’s the anniversary of his death soon, isn’t it? I’m the same every April, even now.” Marta rarely spoke about the wartime affair that had destroyed her marriage and cost her her children, perhaps because it had resurfaced later on with such tragic consequences. “I don’t suppose first loves ever really go away, especially when they were cut off before their time.”
Josephine chose not to correct the assumption that Jack Mackenzie was her first love. For some reason—mostly guilt on her part over how the affair had ended and a need to resolve that in her own mind—she had shied away from telling Marta about Jeannie when the story first appeared in the newspaper. Now she was reluctant to mention it at all in case Marta saw something suspicious in her silence, and she wished that she had been more honest at the outset. She hated the idea of a secret coming between them, particularly one that was so unnecessary. “It’s not jus
t that,” she explained, conscious of missing another opportunity to put things right. “I met Jack during that summer at Charleston.”
“Really? I always assumed you met in Scotland.”
“No, in Sussex. He was training at the convalescent camp just outside Eastbourne that I told you about. Archie was with him.”
Marta smiled. “And what was a young Archie Penrose like?”
“Very similar to an older Archie Penrose. Handsome, thoughtful, serious—the complete opposite of Jack. I remember being a little intimidated by Archie, but Jack was so easy, right from the start. Very kind and very funny and very gentle—and he managed to stay that way, which always astonished me. He was a pacifist and the war horrified him, but somehow he didn’t let it change him.”
