‘Bill, I’d better go and see if…’
‘Will you stop worrying about other people for once. She’ll be all right.’ I didn’t argue. We started walking, but the street was quite crowded and I recognised some of the people who’d been at the inquest stopping and talking to friends who hadn’t. Little groups were gathering. The air was buzzing with a combination of shock and self-satisfaction. The commodore’s daughter. Her poor parents. Who’d have thought it. Just shows. I was jostling against people, getting angrier. Bill kept pace with me, saying nothing, and we eventually found ourselves sitting on a bench by a flowerbed.
‘I simply don’t believe it.’
‘It will take some time. It’s come as a shock to you.’
‘I don’t mean I can’t believe it because it’s a shock. I mean, I simply don’t believe it happened like that.’
‘What bit of it don’t you believe?’
‘What they were implying. That she’s pregnant, addicted to morphine, sunk so low that the only thing to do is come home and slowly strangle herself.’
‘Are you disputing the medical evidence?’
Bill was being desperately patient, the way he’d be with any difficult client.
‘No. If the patholgist says she was pregnant, she was pregnant.’
We were having to speak in low voices. There were people walking by and the whole town would know by now.
‘Or that there were traces of morphine in the syringe?’
‘I assume the police can analyse morphine. There was bruising round the puncture wound.’
‘Superficial bruising. I imagine you could do that injecting your own arm. You’d brace your elbow against something and press down.’ Bill mimed it against the back of the bench. He might think I was deluded, but at least he gave me credit for not being squeamish.
‘Miss Bray…’
I was just about aware of the little voice from behind but I was seeing Verona in the boathouse, sleeve rolled up, elbow pressed against the wall.
‘But you’d have the syringe in your hand, so how could you be bruising yourself at the same time?’
‘Miss Bray, could I talk to you please?’
Bill groaned. I looked round and saw the doctor’s daughter. She was more flushed than ever, hair all over the place. Her face must have got dusty in the drive to get her father to the inquest in time and her tears had made tracks down it. You could see that she’d been properly brought up, so that accosting strangers in public places wasn’t her normal behaviour, but there was a desperate determination about her.
‘What about?’
‘You’re her relation, aren’t you? Verona’s. I want to know … I mean, what people are saying, only nobody will tell me.’
I said, as gently as I could, ‘Don’t you think you’d better go home and wait for your father? I’m sure he’ll tell you when he gets back.’
‘He won’t. He won’t discuss it. He wouldn’t after she’d killed herself and now … what they’re saying…’ She stared at me for a while, then burst out, ‘… that she was enceinte?’
Then she seemed to register Bill’s presence for the first time and her round face went as red as a geranium. I looked at him. He sighed again and stood up.
‘Ten minutes, Nell?’
The girl watched as he walked away round a corner.
I said, ‘You’d better sit down and tell me your name.’
‘Prudence Maidment.’
She sat.
‘How old are you, Prudence?’
‘Eighteen.’
‘And you and Verona were friends?’
‘Always. We went to the same school until we were fifteen. She’d stay with me sometimes and she’d take me out in her boat and … we’d always tell each other our secrets. Always.’
There was still so much of the schoolgirl about Prudence that it reminded me of how far and fast Verona had travelled in such a short time. This girl was a world away from the young woman lounging in a cloud of cigarette smoke. Scrumped apples would probably be Prudence’s idea of wicked indulgence.
‘Is it true?’
It had taken a lot of nerve for Prudence to speak to me. She didn’t deserve evasions.
‘Yes. I’m afraid it is.’
‘Oh.’ Her head went down. ‘How … how did it happen. Did … did somebody force her?’
‘Why do you think that?’
‘Because … we’d talked about it.’
‘Having babies?’
She shook her head so violently that her hat fell off. When I picked it up and gave it to her she didn’t put it back on but turned it round and round in her fingers, mauling the brim.
‘No. About not getting married or getting … getting silly over men or anything like that until we’d done something in the world.’
‘Done what?’
‘Done anything. I … I wanted to be a nurse. Daddy doesn’t want me to, but Verona was going to help me persuade him. He liked Verona, everybody did. He’d have listened to her. Now…’
‘And what did Verona want to do in the world?’
She hesitated a moment and smiled, probably at some memory of schoolgirl confidences, drifting in a boat or lazing under the apple trees.
‘She wanted to join the Navy.’ Prudence mistook my surprise for disapproval.
‘It’s all right, we knew she couldn’t, not really. But she wished she could be a cadet like her brother and then serve on her father’s ship, so that when another war starts she could go with him.’
‘She thought there was going to be a war?’
Prudence stared at me. ‘Of course there will be! Why are we building all those battleships if there’s not going to be?’
‘So Verona took an interest in naval affairs?’
‘Oh yes. She was so good at identifying ships and things. When we visited her godfather in Shaldon we’d always take his old telescope up to the Ness and watch the ships going past. She knew the names of all of them and where they were coming back from. I saw him talking to you. He must be so upset too, poor man.’
‘Saw who?’
‘Verona’s godfather, Admiral Pritty.’
‘The one with the beard and the scar?’
‘Yes, isn’t it awful? It happened on an exercise. A shell exploded. Daddy says he must be in pain from it all the time, but you’d never guess and he’s always such fun with us. He’s got a house at Shaldon, that’s on the other side of the estuary, right down by the water. We’d have races across the river in his rowing boats. Verona would nearly always win. He called her—’
I finished it for her, ‘—his little midshipman.’
It was falling into place now, that conversation with Alex, a few minutes before her world fell apart.
‘Even when he had to be away in London he’d tell the bosun to let us in…’
‘Bosun?’
‘His butler, sort of, but we call him the bosun. He used to be on one of the admiral’s ships. There’d be the telescope and a basket with ginger biscuits and lemonade for us to take up the Ness with us, and when the admiral got back we had to tell him all the ships we’d seen while he was away. Verona even knew the tonnages. She never got one wrong. Well, hardly ever.’
Remembering it, Prudence was talking herself back into cheerfulness. She wasn’t to know she was sinking me deeper and deeper in gloom. We sat there in silence for a while, Prudence staring at me as if there were still questions she wanted to ask. I had no answers for her, only more questions of my own.
‘Were you surprised when Verona told you she was going to London?’
‘Yes.’
‘When did she tell you?’
‘Back in the autumn sometime, late September or early October. We’d been away, so I hadn’t seen her for nearly three weeks. I thought we’d have a lot to talk about but she seemed quieter than usual. I wondered if she’d been ill, but she said no. Anyway, there was one afternoon when Daddy went off to play golf with the admiral and Verona and I went out in her
dinghy. There wasn’t much wind, so we just sat there and talked and it was then she told me.’
‘What?’
‘That she was probably going away to London. She said it wouldn’t be for a few weeks and I wasn’t to talk about it because her mother would be upset.’
‘Did she say why she was going?’
‘She thought probably art school.’
‘Was she interested in art?’
‘She did a very nice painting of our puppies once, except she couldn’t get the paws quite right.’
I’d heard that the Slade’s entry standards had been slipping, but they couldn’t be that low.
‘Did you have the impression there might be other reasons?’
‘Other reasons?’
‘Was art school just an excuse for getting away from home?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What did you say when she told you?’
‘We … we quarrelled.’ She tugged at the hat brim, close to tears again.
‘You didn’t want her to go?’
‘I wanted her to wait for me. We were going together, you see. I’d start training at a hospital and Verona would do whatever she was going to do and we’d stay friends. So I said why not wait until we’d both persuaded Daddy.’
‘And she wouldn’t wait?’
‘No.’
I gave her my handkerchief and waited until she’d dried her eyes.
‘But you made up your quarrel before she went?’
She stared at me.
‘Your father told the inquest that she called on you before she went to London.’
‘She called, yes.’ Her voice was doubtful.
‘But she didn’t make up?’
‘No. I don’t know. I mean she … she was different.’
‘How different?’
‘More … grown-up. I mean, she talked to me as if she were a grown-up and I wasn’t.’
‘What about?’
‘Normal things, like how were my family and her family and so on.’
‘Did she talk about London?’
‘She said she’d finished her packing and was going in two or three days. Her mother had found lodgings for her.’
‘Was she excited about going?’
‘I’m not sure. She was just, well … odd. There was something she wasn’t telling me.’
‘Did you ask her?’
‘No. The way she was, I couldn’t ask her the things I wanted to.’
‘Perhaps she was nervous. It was a big step, after all.’
Prudence thought about it. ‘I think she might have been. She was keyed up. You know, like at school, when it’s your turn to sing the solo.’
‘When she got to London, did she write to you at all?’
‘Yes. Once before Christmas and once after.’
‘What did she say?’
‘The first letter said she didn’t like London and she was missing the sea, but she was working hard and it would be worth it one day.’
‘The second one?’
‘That was just a few weeks ago. She said she was making a lot of friends and having an interesting time.’
‘I wonder if you’d let me see the letters.’ I gave her my card. ‘I’d take great care of them and post them back to you.’
She considered. ‘Would it be alright if I copied them and sent you the copies?’
‘Of course. Thank you.’
A man wheeling two bicycles came along the path between the flowerbeds.
Prudence stood up. ‘I’ll have to go and see about Daddy’s dinner.’
‘Prudence, one thing. If you really want to be a nurse you should do it. I’m sure that’s what Verona would have wanted.’
I was sure of no such thing. There was hardly a person on the planet I understood less than Verona at that moment. Still, it seemed to be what Prudence wanted to hear. She gave me a tear-stained smile, jammed her hat on her curls and went. The man propped the bikes against a seat opposite and came striding across.
‘Bill, what in the world are you doing with those machines?’
‘Getting us out of here. Come on.’
* * *
It’s a long uphill ride from the sea to the edge of Dartmoor. We arrived late afternoon, hot and so thirsty that before anything else we had to find water. We propped the bikes against a boulder and followed a sheep track uphill until we came to a stream pouring itself into a little pool. There was bright green sphagnum moss round the pool and white quartz sand at the bottom. We knelt on either side of it and gulped moss-tasting water from our cupped hands, splashed it over our sweating faces.
‘How did you know this is what I needed?’
‘You can have too much of the grieving friends.’
‘Poor Prudence.’
‘You don’t have to talk about any of it. We could just walk for a bit.’ My hair had come down. I must have been shedding hairpins all along the road. I put it up again with the few I had left and decided to carry my hat. Bill had left his trilby with the bicycles, but we were both wearing city clothes, suitable for inquests but not hiking. Heather shoots and bits of pink bilberry leaf clung to my skirt as we went on uphill. It was a beautiful day, the sky clear blue, shrilling with skylarks. After a while we came to a cluster of granite boulders where the heather gave way to thin sheep-cropped turf and, without saying anything, decided to stop. Bill sat on a boulder and lit his pipe.
‘It may not be the Pennines, but it will do.’
We sat for a while looking out over the sea in the distance. The ships on it were as small as toys. I told Bill about Prudence.
‘She said Verona could recite all the ships of the line and their tonnage.’
‘So could I, when I was about nine and wanted to be Lord Nelson.’
‘Could she have known anything that a spy would want to know?’
Bill looked at me through a cloud of pipe smoke, sceptical.
‘Why in the world should you think that?’
‘Just something a friend said.’
‘Nell, these things are published in the papers and discussed in Parliament. If Germany doesn’t already know how many dreadnoughts we’ve got, all they need to do is enquire politely and enclose a stamped-addressed envelope.’
‘The point is, it shows Verona was seriously interested in naval affairs and until a few months ago she lived in a household where her father and godfather would be talking about them all the time.’
‘Just because your cousin’s a commodore and her godfather’s a retired admiral, that doesn’t mean the Admiralty would be consulting them about their secret plans.’
‘Prudence says the admiral’s sometimes away in London.’
‘Anyway, if either of them did know naval secrets, they’d surely have more sense than to chatter about them in front of the children.’
‘Isn’t that just what they might do? They’d assume the children wouldn’t understand.’
‘But you’ve just been proving to me that Verona would have understood down to the last marlinspike or whatever they use now. You can’t have it both ways.’
‘You think I’m getting spy mania?’
‘I think that complicated brain of yours is doing anything rather than think about what really happened. That’s understandable.’
‘Oh? So what really happened?’
‘A young woman went out into the world and got destroyed by it. Not the first time and I’m afraid it won’t be the last.’
‘Yes, I thought that too. Until the morphine.’
‘That’s part of it.’
‘No. I’ll believe almost anything about what happened to Verona in those few months in London, but I won’t believe she’d started injecting morphine.’
‘Evidence, Nell.’
‘A puncture wound in her arm and an empty syringe. It doesn’t prove she did it herself.’
‘She was living in a house in London where people talked quite openly about smoking opium.’
‘That’s simply th
e kind of thing art students talk about. It’s a very long way from that to being a serious addict. Certainly a lot further than you’d go in the few months she had been there.’
‘But you wouldn’t claim to be an expert on morphine addiction?’
‘No, but I do know something about it.’ This time I wasn’t seeing if I could shock him. I just wanted him to understand. ‘There’s an actress I know. I’m not going to tell you her name, but you’ve probably seen her on stage. She played Nora in A Doll’s House better than anybody’s ever played her before or since. I got to know her because she supported us. Anyway, she took to injecting morphine and it destroyed her. If there’d been any sign of that in Verona or the people she was with, I’m sure I’d have picked it up.’
‘You only saw her at that house once.’
I didn’t answer, stubbornly sure that I was right.
Bill said, ‘Even if she wasn’t addicted to the stuff, she could still have injected it before she killed herself.’
‘Why?’
‘Do you know what it feels like?’ I thought he meant being as desperate as Verona. ‘Morphine, I mean.’
‘No.’
‘I do. A while ago, I fell down a rock face and broke my shinbone in a couple of places. It took a long time to get me to a hospital, so they filled me up with the stuff to ease the pain. Quite a nice effect. You’re conscious but you feel as if you’re watching yourself from a distance, calm and easy as if it had nothing to do with you.’
I watched a skylark take off and spiral up to the point where it would start singing. Bill went on talking.
‘Perhaps one of her friends had told Verona that. So, if she’d decided to do what she did, she might have known morphine would make it … easier.’
‘If she wanted it easy, why did she do it that terrible way?’
‘I don’t suppose she was thinking very clearly. She had a problem and could only see one way out of it.’
‘The pregnancy? But there wasn’t only one way out of it. If she’d only come to me, I could have helped her. She could have stayed with me.’
That had been the worst thing about the day – the hard fact that I could have helped Verona, if only I’d seen more of her, got her to trust me. Bill moved closer. I felt his arm round my shoulders.
The Perfect Daughter Page 9
