by Emma Jameson
“Then perhaps I’ll seek more balance by spending time with you, Miss Jenkins.”
“Rose.” That smile again, as bright and inviting as the first time he’d seen it. “Call me Rose.”
* * *
It was no use calling Bobby Archer’s occasional employer, Winston Singer of Singer’s Fine Furnishings and Turkish Rugs, to ask if Archer had driven a lorry the night Penny died. Like virtually every business great and small, the office would be closed on Sunday. So when Ben returned to Fenton House after passing that very pleasant half hour with Miss Jenkins—Rose—he used up his restless energy on the parallel bars. He alternated walking back and forth with long periods of standing unsupported, continuing until the ache in his legs opened a second franchise just behind his eyeballs. By supper time, he was too pained and worn out to eat—and not all that hungry anyway, after his orgiastic breakfast. So he went to bed, pleased to know he wouldn’t be sleeping in Lucy McGregor’s old sewing room much longer. Tomorrow, with Mrs. Cobblepot standing by in the event of a disaster, he’d test his stair climbing skills and possibly view Fenton House’s upper floor for the first time.
He dreamed he bounded up those stairs as he once would have, effortlessly, two at a time. It was summer, not late autumn, and there was no blackout. The curtains were parted and the windows were open, a night breeze sliding over the sills like moonflower vines up a trellis. In the master bedroom, a blue lamp burned, its indigo-glazed shade enhanced by the blue fringed shawl draped atop it. The bedstead and chest of drawers were shabby. Wallpaper patterned in stripes and clusters of violets… a porcelain wash basin, its cracked pitcher filled with cut daisies… and a young woman sitting cross-legged on the still-made bed, a slender green volume open in her lap.
“Your wife made some notes in the margins. I think it’s a sort of diary.”
The woman’s voice, lower and huskier than most females, suited her. Ben had no idea what she was wearing. It wasn’t a frock or nightgown or housedress. It was as blue as the lamp, high-necked and long-sleeved, with silver piping along the bottom of each bell sleeve. Her dark brown hair fell in wild curls over her shoulders; her brown eyes were wide, hypnotic. She wasn’t a traditional English rose, but she was striking, all the more so because she was so very singular.
“You’re reading Penny’s book?” It was a silly thing to say, but in dreams he frequently spoke like an idiot.
“One of us had to. Some of the notations are just numbers. Did she owe someone money?”
“I’ve no idea. I paid the household bills; her father provided her spending allowance. But what’s that you’re wearing?”
She smiled. “A robe. A special one. Open your eyes, doctor. I’m not the only woman in Cornwall known to don one like it.” Tossing the book aside, she stretched luxuriously, like a cat awakening from deep sleep. “Sorry I was clumsy before. With the talking board, I mean. This is all new to me.”
“I don’t understand.” Something was wrong; something was nagging at the back of his mind, like a semi-dormant toothache threatening to erupt with fresh pain. The delectable summer breeze had become cold, stale air; the windows, once opened to the night, were shut tight in observance of the blackout. The blue lamp looked spectral now, as if it burned half in his world, half in another.
“Listen to me.” The woman’s voice faded in and out. “I have something. It belonged to the man who killed your wife.”
It occurred to Ben that he must be dreaming, a thought that always preceded waking up. “How do you know?”
“I saw him.”
Her lips moved soundlessly, as if saying a name, and he woke up. Not in his bed, but in an icy pitch dark room.
Smooth floorboards were beneath his hands. A lumpy rug was under his knees. For what felt like eons he remained there, heart racing, throat tight, waiting for this madness to pass, to dissolve, proving the blue lamp and the husky-voiced woman only a dream within a dream.
A few feet away, something creaked, like a foot against a loose board.
“Hello?” His voice sounded thin, strange.
Silence.
Slowly, unable to see even his hands in front of his face, Ben crawled forward, groping. His breath came so raggedly, blood rushing so loud in his ears, he didn’t even cry out when something small and heavy clattered to the floor. Reckless with fear, he reached out and touched something small, rectangular, and cold. It felt like his own Ronson cigarette lighter, except for an etched pattern on the case.
I was sleepwalking. Except I can’t walk yet, not well, so I crawled. All the way up the stairs to the master bedroom.
What he wouldn’t have given in that moment for the ability to leap up, to chase away the darkness with the flick of an electric switch.
And while I was here, I spoke to Lucy McGregor.
Ranunculus
29 October, 1939
“Bam!” Lady Juliet Linton clapped her hands together, earning intakes of breath all around. “I struck the gate and just kept going. No idea I was dragging it along. Finally we came upon the chemist’s shop—tire blown, gate beating against the passenger door, and poor little Jane silent as the grave.”
Her hostess, Mrs. Margaret Freeman, rolled her eyes at the cliché, but the other guests—Alice, Katrina, Eunice, and Betty—looked appropriately alarmed. Two of them lived in Margaret’s neighborhood and had never met Ben, Jane, or Mr. Dwerryhouse. The other two, residents of Birdswing, had traveled to Margaret’s Plymouth home for the monthly meeting of the Monday Moaners. The alliteration, as well as the lighthearted name, was deliberate. Otherwise, the group could veer out of amusing cynicism and into out-and-out self-pity with relative ease. They were ill-matched in many ways, like a flower bed sown by the wind, with only matrimonial troubles to unify them. Alice, a Cape daisy, lived alone because her husband had walked out on her. Katrina, a pretty little foxglove, was a virtual pariah; her husband had chosen to serve his prison sentence for tax evasion rather than shoot himself, as gentlemen could once be relied upon to do. Eunice, a common cowslip, detested her spouse, who’d placed two of her children in one of those mental deficiency hospitals that everyone knew about but nobody spoke of. And Betty, a wild daffodil, had left the Anglican Church for her husband’s faith, reformed Judaism, incurring her family’s ire. Now he was in France preparing to fight for his country, leaving her six months pregnant and mostly alone, except for her fellow Moaners.
Margaret, the Moaners’ co-founder, could be compared to a bee orchid: beautiful and irresistible. She was the only member with no complaints about her spouse. Yet her entry ticket, as the group called it, nevertheless related to Gerald Freeman; she was his second wife. And since the first Mrs. Freeman, although twenty years Margaret’s senior, was still very much alive, Margaret was received in Plymouth society about as well as Katrina, minus the pitying looks.
Juliet, the Moaners’ other co-founder, couldn’t equate herself with a flower. If she were any plant, it was English ivy: climbing tall, spreading wide, virtually impervious to harm, and strong enough to burrow through walls and crack foundations. Like most gardeners, Juliet hated the stuff, yet related to it all the same. Her entry ticket into the club was Ethan Bolivar. Usually when it was her turn to speak over tea and cake, she regaled the ladies with her husband’s latest outrage. If he’d vanished into the mists again, she fell back on Ethan’s golden oldies. But today excreting her usual bile held no appeal; nothing could be more boring. It was the story of the false widow bite and that terrifying, exhilarating ride back to Birdswing that she burned to tell.
“I was so frightened for Jane, I’d forgotten everything else, including the fact Dr. Bones was on crutches,” Juliet continued, enjoying her rapt audience’s attention. “But then he fixed his eyes upon me—blue eyes, bright blue, if I didn’t tell you—and spoke so calmly, and with such perfect authority, I positively shone with reflected confidence. I swept into that shop like Boudicca and demanded adrenaline chloride to save a dying child!”
Eu
nice applauded. Betty, Alice, and Katrina leaned forward, cake slices forgotten. Margaret covered a yawn.
“Oh, don’t mind me, dear,” she said when Juliet threw her a look. “My health’s dodgy again, and I’m starved for sleep. It’s no reflection on your story. Though if you mention the color of that man’s eyes again, I may lob a sugar cube at you.”
“Lob away. I’ll collect it as part of my ration.” Juliet kept her tone cheerful, but inside she was disappointed by such frank disinterest. Surely her friend and fellow gardener—garden mentor, as a matter of fact—didn’t begrudge her one happy adventure after years of mutual commiseration?
We haven’t met since her last outbreak, and that was two or three months ago. She’s probably a morass of unaired grievances. I sound like Pollyanna to her, that’s all.
When Juliet finished her story, everyone clapped, even Margaret, albeit with a knowing half-smile. The skin disorder she suffered—a series of rashes and sores that erupted without warning and hurt to look at—never affected her above the neck, which was fortunate. Margaret Freeman had the strength to endure rescinded invitations, powder room confrontations, and a daily gauntlet of tuts and whispers. But she didn’t have the strength to face the world with a disfigured, well—face.
It would be the same for me if I lost my health, Juliet thought. I couldn’t bear to be bedridden, dependent on others to be fed, bathed, entertained. I’d go to pieces. Margaret could let herself be tended. She does, in fact, whenever Gerald feels like spoiling her rotten. She could survive becoming ornamental. But becoming ugly? Never.
Juliet listened to Margaret’s tale—how her latest outbreak had rendered her “bad as a leper” in the eyes of her own staff—with nods and smiles, but her attention kept slipping away. Contemplating the loss of her health reminded her of Ben. He was doing better, on that everyone agreed, but suppose he never regained full use of his legs? Would the prospect of lifelong reliance on crutches or a cane harm his spirits? Men were so sensitive to the appellation of cripple; quick to brand one another with it while terrified of becoming “half a man.” Well, even if the war ended triumphantly in a cascade of fireworks and Union Jacks, a great many Englishmen would return with injured or missing limbs. And if Ben Bones gave off so much as a whiff of self-pity, she’d root it out like English ivy or Japanese knotweed. What difference did it make if he needed a cane? He was clever, compassionate, handsome, decisive, well-spoken, well-built, handsome, deft with his hands, not really short so much as compact, handsome—
“Juliet!” Margaret was laughing at her. “What on earth are you daydreaming about, smiling and rolling your eyes like a great sheep? Tell me it’s not Dr. Broken Bones!”
Alice, Betty, and Katrina tittered. They were Margaret’s friends first and foremost, a situation Juliet was well-acquainted with. As a child, adults had liked her—teachers, vicars, parents. But her schoolmates had never bonded with her, or followed her, or chosen her friendship over some other girl’s when the chips were down. Juliet had never been anyone’s first choice, except Ethan Bolivar’s, and he’d fallen for her money.
Eunice, another loner with a habit of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, frowned at their hostess. “‘Broken Bones?’ That’s unkind. Didn’t his wife die in the accident?”
“She did! And what a wife she was.” Margaret smiled at Eunice and Betty, both Plymouth natives. “Penny Eubanks grew up with us in Birdswing, isn’t that right, Juliet? Shall I tell them what she was like, or shall you?”
“Nothing but good of the dead, mind you,” Eunice said primly. She was a stickler for that.
“Oh, quite right.” Margaret pushed a lock of dyed red hair, rich and deep as crushed velvet, behind one ear. As a girl, she’d lacked Penny Eubanks’s natural loveliness, yet made up for it now in a number of ways: a strict diet to keep her figure trim, expertly applied cosmetics, stylish clothes, and red-lacquered fingernails to match that long, luxuriant hair. She was living proof that a woman of average looks could sculpt herself into something close to beauty, given sufficient budget and attention to detail. “Let’s talk about her husband, then. Isn’t dissecting husbands what the Moaners do best?”
“Vivisecting,” Juliet said warily.
“You remember I was in the throes of illness when Dr. Bones arrived in Cornwall,” Margaret continued, pouring herself a second cup of tea, “so I’ve not witnessed this medical paragon in action. And yes, the story of how he saved Mrs. Daley’s child is wonderful. It even reached us here in Plymouth, where one or two things of greater importance than a spider bite occur on a daily basis. As a port city, we have our eyes on the skies, braced for German bombers.”
Juliet bristled. “As do we.”
“Yes, but we may actually come under attack by the enemy. What’s Birdswing afraid of, the Archer twins?” Margaret dropped one sugar cube in her cup, then another, plop, plop, and grinned. “I heard about that false alarm of theirs. No doubt General Gaston wet himself. At any rate, my point is this: to marry a woman like Penny, Dr. Bones must be a man of weak character or surpassing superficiality. Oh, I suppose he might have been a fortune hunter, like dear Ethan. But only if he were dirt poor, since Penny’s father’s wealth was a flash in the pan. He should have sold that company years ago. He’ll be penniless soon, if he isn’t already.”
“I hadn’t heard that,” Juliet said.
“Another bit of news more suited to Plymouth or London, where financial realities matter. But back to Dr. Bones. If he is a fortune hunter, I suggest you fling a pretty girl in his path, posthaste,” Margaret told Juliet between sips of tea. “Otherwise he may cotton on to what you’re worth and make you a Moaner twice over.”
“What rot.” Juliet was too infuriated to turn red; that would happen later, after the shock wore off. “Dr. Bones is still in mourning, as is only fit and proper. In the meantime, our Miss Jenkins has let it be known she’s utterly besotted with the man,” she lied. “She’ll stand up with him before next Christmas, mark my words, and I’ll be the first to throw rice. Besides.” Juliet pushed her slice of frosted lemon cake away. “I’m still a married woman. Dr. Bones isn’t the sort of man who’d interpose himself between man and wife, any more than I’m the sort of woman who’d sully myself so unforgivably.”
She’d gone too far. That was nothing new; Juliet often did when truly angry. And although Margaret gave no sign of offense, the party died a swift death thereafter. Alice, Katrina, and Betty fell silent, except for a few bland pleasantries directed toward their hostess; Eunice focused on her tea, in her own world, as usual. When the goodbyes began, Juliet pretended not to notice how the others shunned her. Instead, she drew Eunice into the foyer for a private conversation. There was a delicate subject she’d been working up to broaching, and the best antidote to fear was action.
“Eunice, let me start by saying, I consider you a friend. We’ve shared many confidences over the years.”
The other woman’s eyes snaked from side to side. “Have I done something wrong?”
“Not at all. I don’t mean to seem so cloak and dagger. It’s only… well… I’m at a bit of a loss. I have a question for you, and it may sound like base curiosity, but I assure you, it isn’t. Might I proceed?”
Eunice looked surprised. The pain of losing her children to an institution society insisted upon, yet despised—of being expected to pretend they didn’t exist—had aged her beyond her twenty-nine years. A dozen slashed lines, like hash marks on a tally sheet, marred her lips; taut cords stood out in her neck. Afraid to conceive and bear other babies that might also be different, and thus taken away, she often kept her lips pressed together, as if anticipating another blow. Now, despite obvious suspicion, she nodded for Juliet to continue.
“Have you considered adopting a baby?”
“Of course. But Leonard says no. It won’t work, going on a long holiday and coming back with a child. People will guess the truth and talk.”
“Is that so terrible?”
“No
t to me. But Leonard says, think of the child. They’ll say he was someone’s bastard, dumped in an orphanage and living off charity. He’ll be teased every day of his life.” Taking a deep breath, Eunice repeated the phrase Juliet knew she hated most, words she always attributed to her husband. “‘Only normal boys and girls are happy.’”
“Oh, no doubt.” Juliet sighed. “But what of my parents? They were handsome, wealthy, and titled. Their little girl was fated to be the most beloved child in Birdswing, wasn’t she? Except she had a plain face, a sharp tongue, and towered over all the boys. It’s true, I wasn’t a normal child, and sometimes I was desperately unhappy. What about you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Were you a normal child?”
Eunice frowned, suspicious all over again. “Yes.”
“Were you always happy?”
“Course not. Never very good at making friends. And the boys called me ‘Chicken Legs.’”
“So Leonard wants a child destined for utter joy, a child no one can taunt. But we all get taunted,” Juliet said. “If you adopt a child, he or she will get put through the wringer for that. Yet if you could have one naturally, he or she would, too—for being too fat or thin or a hundred other things. At least an adopted child can say he or she was chosen. The rest of us simply turn up one day and our poor parents can’t give us back.”
Eunice’s eyes widened at that unfortunate choice of words. Inwardly, Juliet cursed herself, wondering if she’d made an irretrievable blunder. But then Eunice shrugged.
“It’s a good argument. But Leonard won’t listen. Won’t visit an orphanage. I remember how he was with our babies, before—before he knew. He fell in love on sight. I think he’s afraid if he sees a baby in need of a home, he’ll weaken, so he makes sure never to see one.”
