Sorry for the Dead

by Nicola Upson

  Harriet went over to pick it up, and that was when she saw him, hanging from the branches of an apple tree, his fur covered in sticky black liquid until he was barely recognizable as the cat she loved. A noise came from her throat that she seemed to have no ownership of, primal and raw, a mixture of rage and pain and disbelief that was at the same time beyond any emotion she had ever known. She ran to him, hoping for his sake that he was already dead, and tore the leather whip down from the tree, noticing how tightly it had been pulled around his neck. The creosote was everywhere—in his ears and mouth, matted in his fur—and the strong, smoky smell of the tar filled her nose as she clutched him to her and tried to wipe it from his eyes. She held him tight—something that he had never allowed her to do when he was alive—and stayed with him under the trees until George came to look for her.

  CHAPTER 4

  Harriet had assumed that a verdict of death by misadventure, when and if it came, would be a relief, but she was wrong. As the coroner announced his decision and a murmur of conversation broke out around the courtroom, all she felt was a depressing certainty that nothing really had changed. They were still outcasts and likely to remain so. She felt George tremble at her side as the tension of the last few days broke, and glanced anxiously at her lover, aware of how carefully they were being scrutinized from all directions. “Come on,” she said gently, risking a hand on George’s arm. “Let’s go.”

  All the girls had turned out to support them, even those not called to give evidence, and Josephine and Jeannie began to shepherd them toward the railway station, where they would catch the train for Glynde and walk back to Charleston from there. Harriet had declined the offer of a lift from Dr. O’Brien, knowing that they would want to be on their own when the inquest was over, and she led the way back to the small side street by the castle, where they had left the van. It had escaped relatively unscathed, with just a scratch down one side that could almost have been accidental, and she slammed the door firmly on any attempt at conversation by the stragglers who had followed them from court. “Thank God that’s over,” she said, rubbing her temples against the headache that had been threatening all morning. “Perhaps now they’ll leave us in peace.”

  It was a vain hope, but she had taken to saying things that she no longer believed to be true, and she clung to it anyway. Tuesday was half-day closing in Lewes, and the streets were pleasantly quiet. She headed out on the Firle road, then changed her mind about going straight home and took the lane that led up to the Beacon instead; they needed space to talk, away from the farmhouse and any reminders of what had happened, and George raised no objections. “I thought we could both do with some time on our own,” she said. “We don’t seem to have had a second for weeks without somebody’s eyes on us.”

  There was no answer, and she looked at George, horrified to see the tears silently streaming down her face. She pulled the van over onto the grass and took George in her arms, desperate to carry some of her pain, but she seemed inconsolable, and Harriet could only wait while her grief played itself out. “I’m sorry, Harry,” she said at last, when she was calm enough to speak. “I’m so sorry for everything you’ve gone through because of me. I’ve asked too much of you—I always do—but I swear it was never meant to go this far.”

  “You haven’t asked for anything that I wouldn’t willingly have given a thousand times over.”

  “But you’ve made so many sacrifices, risked everything to protect what we have, done things you should never have had to do, and you’ve never once thrown it back in my face.”

  “And I never will. I don’t blame you, George. You understand me, don’t you? I don’t blame you for any of this.”

  “Not now, perhaps, but you might wake up one day and wonder if it was all worth it.”

  “As long as you’re there beside me, I’ll know that it was worth it.” She held George’s hand to her lips, troubled by how lost and defeated she seemed. Since Dorothy’s death, she had watched George fade, day by day, minute by minute, until it was like living with the ghost of their love. The sudden outburst of emotion frightened her even more than the quiet despair which had preceded it, and Harriet began to fear what George might be driven to do. “We’ll share the burden of this, just like we share everything else,” she said. “Don’t you dare make me carry that on my own.” To Harriet’s relief, her words seemed to make an impression. “Let’s walk for a bit,” she suggested. “We haven’t done that for ages. It’ll do us both good.”

  It felt wrong, somehow, to be out in the open and breathing in the sweet, fresh smell of gorse on this of all days. Her mind kept going back to the courtroom and the stricken look on Mrs. Norwood’s face as first Josephine and then George testified to her daughter’s final moments. Betty’s evidence had been given between sobs, and her ordeal in the witness box was as distressing to Harriet as the words themselves; she had looked continually to her parents for support, but the Norwoods only seemed to have enough grief for one daughter, and it was Charity who comforted her when she went back to her seat, and who raised the loudest objections when the verdict was eventually announced. As the crowd dispersed around them, Dorothy’s parents remained in their seats, holding hands and staring straight ahead, at a loss to know where their life had gone, and although it shamed Harriet to compare her pain with theirs, she knew exactly how they felt.

  “We need to talk about the future,” George said. “Cassidy told me last night that he won’t be recommending any investment from the government, but I suppose that scarcely matters now.”

  “Surely when he knows the verdict—”

  “The verdict won’t make any difference, Harry. We’re tainted by this, although he’s far too much of a politician to be honest about his real reasons. Apparently we simply haven’t got the capacity to expand in the way that the Ministry would want us to. There’s no argument to be had.”

  Harriet wondered how George could sound so sanguine about the very thing that had, until recently, been all she ever dreamt of. For a fleeting moment, the smallest flame of resentment flickered at the back of her mind, but she fought against it. “So what do you want to do?” she asked. “Give up and run away? Start again somewhere else, and live happily ever after until someone works out that I’m not your sister and more than your friend? Until they hear where we’ve come from and why we left?”

  Her voice was heavy with sarcasm, and George looked sadly at her. “You do blame me. That didn’t take so long after all.”

  “Christ, George, don’t you dare tell me how I feel. You can’t possibly imagine it. And just so we’re clear—I don’t blame you for what you have done, only for what you haven’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why won’t you fight? You’ve always been so strong. You’ve always stood up for what you believed in, no matter how hard it was. You’ve always fought for your dreams. Why not now?”

  “Because I haven’t got the heart for it any more—don’t you understand that? It’s easy to fight when you believe in something, but my dreams are what brought us to this mess. We don’t deserve to be happy, Harry—not now. A girl is dead because she dared to stand in our way, and there’s nothing I can do to put that right. You know what I mean, don’t you? I don’t have to spell it out.”

  Something in Harriet longed to make her do just that, if only to stop the words festering between them, but she didn’t have the energy to argue. “Yes, I know.” She turned away and headed for the road. “I’m going back to the house. You can do as you like. You usually do.”

  * * *

  After the tension in the courtroom and the flurry of interest that followed the girls’ progress down Lewes high street, the comparative peace of Glynde Station was a welcome relief. “Thank God that went the right way,” Jeannie said as they followed the trail of students across the fields. “I don’t think I could have stood another day of worrying about what might happen to us if the college had to close.”

  She squeezed Josephine’s hand
, but Josephine pulled away. “Don’t do that here. One of the girls might see.”

  Jeannie stared at her in surprise. “So what if they do? They’ll think nothing of it. They’re as happy as we are—just look at them.” It was true. There was a jubilant atmosphere among the students as they wound their way along the edge of a wood, taking advantage of the shade, and Josephine watched as Joyce and Mags linked arms, leading the other girls in a medley of morale-boosting war songs that they had hijacked for a different sort of victory. Suddenly Jeannie stopped walking, forcing Josephine to turn back to her. “What’s the matter, Josephine? You’ve been acting strangely for the last few days. I thought it was the pressure of the inquest, but all that’s over now. You should be relieved.”

  “Why? I don’t see what’s changed.”

  “Everything’s changed. Harriet and Miss H have been cleared of any responsibility for Dorothy’s death, and there’s no stain on the college’s reputation. We can get back to normal, the way things were before this all started. Surely you want that as much as I do? We’ve got the whole summer ahead of us.”

  “There’s nothing remotely normal about what you and I have been doing.” The words came out before she had a chance to consider their impact. Jeannie looked at her with such hurt in her eyes that Josephine had to turn away. “You don’t really believe that all this scandal is just going to blow over, do you?” she said.

  “Of course it will, given time.” Jeannie spoke evenly, a degree of challenge now in her voice. “And even if it doesn’t, even if George and Harriet are still guilty in some people’s eyes and always will be, what has that got to do with you and me?”

  “You wouldn’t need to ask that if you’d been at the market with us. Dorothy’s death was only the half of it.” Josephine closed her eyes, remembering the hatred in the streets, the soul-destroying moment in the van coming home when she had realized that she wasn’t strong enough to follow her heart, and never would be; since then, every minute she had spent with Jeannie had felt like a lie, the sort of smile you offer a dying man. “If we carry on as we are, that’s the life we choose,” she said. “Everyone would hate us if they knew how we felt.”

  “Not necessarily. There are other people—”

  “Like us?” Josephine laughed, her frustrations with the world and with herself making her more scornful than she intended. The confusion and vulnerability of the last few days had laid bare a streak of callousness that she had never noticed in herself before, and while she hated it, she was powerless to stop it. “So where are these people, Jeannie? Living happily ever after somewhere with no one to bother them? You’re not being realistic.”

  “Don’t think for a minute that I’m going to apologize for that. And anyway, George and Harriet—”

  “George and Harriet have been completely destroyed by this—haven’t you noticed that? They’re bickering about nothing all the time and silently blaming each other for the way that their world has just been pulled from under them.” She forced herself to speak more gently, willing Jeannie to understand how she felt. “The man in the pub, your father—they’re not the exception, Jeannie. That’s what most people would think of us. It’s what my family would think.”

  “And they’re hundreds of miles away. They don’t ever have to know.” Jeannie’s words were meant as an argument in favor of their future, but they only served to strengthen Josephine’s resolve. The trauma of witnessing Dorothy’s death and the violent reactions that followed had left her feeling isolated and alone, and she longed for the safety of home. The urge to return to something more familiar was suddenly as strong in her as the pull of the south had been when she first arrived, and her newfound freedom—synonymous with Jeannie’s love—now seemed alien and dangerous. “So what are you going to do?” Jeannie asked defiantly, apparently reading her thoughts. “Pick up with the soldier from the next village just to make life easier?”

  Ashamed of her own transparency, Josephine quickened her pace. “This has to stop,” she said, hoping to get within earshot of the girls so that Jeannie couldn’t argue. “I can’t do it any more. It’s too much.”

  “Of course it’s too much. That’s why it’s so precious. And you’ll change your mind,” Jeannie called after her. “We love each other. You can’t just turn your back on that.”

  Josephine kept walking, wondering if there would ever come a time when she stopped wanting to believe her.

  * * *

  George and Harriet drove back to Charleston in silence. The first sign of something amiss was the college sign, which had been daubed with red paint until it was no longer legible. “They knew there’d be nobody here during the inquest,” George said when she saw it. “Of course they knew. How could I have been so bloody stupid?”

  She opened the door before Harriet had even brought the van to a standstill, and ran past the house to the gardens. Harriet went after her, fearful for what she would find after Byron’s death, but not even that could have prepared her for the devastation that greeted her. Everything that was beautiful or productive had been completely destroyed. It was as if the garden screamed. The flowers and shrubs around the top terrace had been savagely pulled from the earth and scattered across the lawn, and the roses that meant so much to both of them were torn down from their arch and severed at the base. The vegetable plots were barely recognizable, their neat lines and promise of abundance obliterated in a matter of minutes. Runner bean poles had been snapped and their plants trampled into the earth; and any produce that was nearly ready had been roughly dug up and left on the surface, where someone had doused it in bleach, rendering everything inedible. Harriet heard the gate open at the bottom of the garden and went to join George by the potting shed, following a trail of broken terracotta where flowerpots had been thrown to the ground. If possible, the damage here was even more extreme. Most of the glass in the greenhouse and cold frames had been smashed, and the water butts were upended so that all the precious water flooded out onto barren ground. The vandals had ransacked the shed and used some of its contents to build a bonfire around the bench that George had always loved to sit on; it was burning steadily still, and someone had placed the scarecrow on top in an eloquent gesture of mockery and contempt. Through the flames, their figures distorted by the shimmering heat, Harriet could see a group of farmworkers and villagers standing silently at the edge of the field; to her horror, most of them were women.

  “I don’t understand,” she said helplessly. “Why would they go this far? How do they think they can get away with it?”

  “Who’s going to stop them? They hate us. They’ve always hated us.”

  George’s voice was tight and strained, and her face was white with rage. Before Harriet could stop her, she headed back toward the house, returning minutes later with a shotgun. “George, no—for God’s sake, don’t,” Harriet shouted, trying to catch her arm. “Can’t you see? That’s exactly what they want you to do. Don’t give them the satisfaction.”

  George took no notice and leveled the gun at the gathering. There was a moment of stillness that seemed to last an age, a perilous stalemate that no one seemed inclined to break. Then one of the women took a provocative step forward. Harriet closed her eyes, listening to the taunts of abuse and waiting for the explosion, but it never came. When she dared to open them again, George had lowered the gun and sunk to her knees, and her tormenters—sensing victory—began to drift away.

  CHAPTER 5

  Harriet sat on the end of Peter’s bed and watched as he put the last few things into a holdall. “I’ve lost count of the times I’ve seen you pack,” she said, absentmindedly straightening the bedclothes, “and it never gets any easier. I wish you didn’t have to go.”

  “For two pins I’d tell the British army what to do with its call-up notice.”

  “And end up with a court martial? Or worse? That would really help.”

  “But I hate leaving you here like this, Harry. It’s not safe.”

  “We won’t be h
ere much longer. Dr. O’Brien has found us a house in Devon with a couple of months left on the lease, and we can go whenever we like. He’s been so kind and it will give us a chance to think about what we want to do next.” She smiled, a little bitterly, and added, “Not that we’re exactly inundated with options.”

  “Whatever you do and wherever you go, you’ll still be with her.”

  She touched his cheek and made him look at her, tracing the lines around his eyes that were the only overt signs—so far—of the toll that the war had taken. “Peter, this is destroying George. I’ve never seen her so beaten before, and she needs me. I couldn’t leave her now, even if I wanted to. And I don’t want to—ever. I love her. I’ve loved her from the moment I set eyes on her, and that will never change, no matter how much you might want it to.”

  “Even though she’s killed someone?”

  She glanced toward the open bedroom door, horrified by his lack of discretion. “I didn’t say that. You know I didn’t.”