by Clare Flynn
‘I see.’ Christopher was uncertain how he felt.
‘More significantly, I’m sure we can build up her trust and help her to be less afraid. More able to respond to stimulus. That should make her poor miserable life a little more bearable.’
Christopher got up and stretched a hand out to the doctor. ‘Thank you, Doctor. I will return. That is, if you think it might be beneficial for her to see me?’
‘I think it would be extremely beneficial. But on one condition.’
Christopher sat down again.
‘That if you do return you must do so on a regular basis. It would be detrimental to the poor creature if you were to visit for a while and then stop. It would be harmful for her to become familiar with you…’ He thought for a moment then added, ‘Or maybe, in her own way, became fond of you, and then you were to vanish from her life.’
‘I understand. I wouldn’t do that.’ He rose again and moved to the door. As he opened it he turned back. ‘One more question, Dr Henderson. Could you envisage it ever being possible for Jane to live in the care of her family? Given the right level of support?’
The doctor raised his hands, palms upwards. ‘Again I would urge caution. Change is a great disruption to a patient like Miss Walters. She is institutionalised and would find it extremely difficult to adapt. And if having done so, for whatever reason, it was decided that the family could not cope, it would be a serious trauma for her to return.’ He reached for another cigarette, tapping it on the surface of the desk. ‘Don’t underestimate the toll on a family, caused by having a person such as her in their midst. She requires full-time care. She’s unable to dress or wash herself. Needs help feeding. She’s like a small infant in terms of her capacities. Without the means to provide a nurse to care for her I fear the situation would be detrimental for all concerned.’
‘We have the means,’ Christopher said. ‘Goodbye and thank you.’
Chapter 13
While Christopher was meeting his half-sister and discussing her care, Martha, unaware, made her way to the sunken garden, where she set about pruning some climbing roses which had grown rampant along the north wall of the gardens.
She didn’t see Mrs Shipley approaching and nearly fell off the step ladder in fright at being addressed.
‘So it’s true, he’s put you to work in here.’ Kit’s mother looked Martha up and down, her lip curling in disgust at the sight of her former gamekeeper’s wife, clad in breeches. ‘I wish to speak with you. But not now. Not here. Come to the house as soon as you have put on some respectable clothes and cleaned yourself up.’
Without waiting for Martha to reply, Mrs Shipley was gone.
An hour later, Martha Walters was shown into the library by the butler. She walked around the enormous room with its full-length windows along one wall, the others lined with oak shelving, crammed with leather-bound volumes, most of which appeared to be in pristine condition. Martha remembered Kit’s offer to lend her any books she wanted to read and wandered over to the shelves to browse. Her hand was raised to take a volume from the shelf, when she became aware of someone watching her from the open doorway. She dropped her hand, guiltily, and moved away from the bookcases.
Edwina Shipley sailed into the room and took up a seat behind a large oak table, waving her hand imperiously to signal that Martha should approach and stand in front of the table. She did as she was bid and Mrs Shipley pointed to an envelope on the table.
‘Take it. It’s to tell you to be out of the keeper’s cottage by the end of the week.’
Martha glanced down at the envelope but made no move to pick it up.
‘My son wrote it before he left this morning. He’s more generous than I am. I would prefer you to leave immediately and will make it worth your while to do so.’ She reached for the cheque book that was already beside her on the table. ‘It’s made out to cash. You will need to take it to a bank. There’s enough for you to pay for food and lodgings for a few months or more. It will tide you over until you can make arrangements for yourself.’ She fixed cold eyes on Martha. ‘And before you ask, my son was unable to convey his letter to you himself, as he is away.’
‘I know where he is. He’s in Cambridge.’ Martha stared straight at her, defiant.
‘You’re mistaken, Mrs Walters. He might well have been planning to go to Cambridge today – until he was made aware of the truth about you. That has changed everything. Right now he is in Northington visiting the lunatic asylum there. St Crispin’s.’ A half-smile ghosted across her face. ‘Do you know why he should be there? Why he should be visiting St Crispin’s?’
Martha had no idea, so she said nothing, but had a mounting sense of fear.
‘He is establishing for himself whether what I told him about you and my late husband is true.’ She watched Martha curiously. ‘Were you trying to protect my son from the knowledge that you were the mistress of his father – or were you, as I suspect, only too aware that if you’d told him the truth he would have gone nowhere near you?’
Martha felt her knees weaken. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Her hands gripped the edge of the table. She was frightened now.
‘Don’t lie. My son may fall for it but it cuts no ice with me. I may have turned a blind eye to what went on between my husband and you but I will not stand by and watch you ruin my son’s life.’
Martha said nothing, her head lowered. Dizzy. Terrified.
‘Captain Shipley has gone to visit your daughter today. He refused to believe me at first. Wanted to see for himself.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Martha’s words were faint, barely audible, even to herself.
‘The child you gave birth to twenty years ago. Jane Walters. I understand the girl’s brain was damaged at birth and she is classed as an idiot. My son wanted to establish the scale of your deception: that you gave birth to a daughter fathered by my husband and that the child has spent the last twenty years shut away in a lunatic asylum.’
Martha swayed and struggled to remain standing. But she wasn’t ready to let this woman intimidate her with her lies, so she forced herself to remain on her feet, her head held high.
Edwina smiled. ‘You knew it was alive, didn’t you?’
Martha gulped.
‘Didn’t you?’ Mrs Shipley tapped her fingers on the surface of the table.
‘No.’ Barely a whisper.
‘Is that what they told you?’
The room spun around Martha. Waves of nausea rushed up from the pit of her stomach. A dark place. Shut away – locked inside her. Sudden memory of death coming to her, waiting to take her, as she begged it to come, to release her from the pain. Unbearable pain. Ripping her apart. Let me die. Oh, God, please make it stop. Let it be over. Let me die.
But she had lived. Only to be told the child that the doctor had dragged out of her small broken body had been born dead.
Martha had buried the horror of what had happened to her twenty years ago. But now it surfaced, bringing back all the pain and torment she had gone through: the searing grief at the loss of the baby she had never wanted while she was carrying it. Standing here now, unsteady on her feet, the agony overwhelmed her. Her legs crumpled underneath her and she fell to the floor.
Revived by the application of smelling salts, Martha found herself sitting in an armchair near the tall windows, with Mrs Shipley standing over her. She was disoriented at first, then remembered the terrible things the woman had told her. She opened and closed her eyes then said, ‘Where is he? Where is K… Captain Shipley?’
‘I told you, he’s gone to confirm the whereabouts of your daughter. And as soon as he has done that, he will be travelling on to make amends with Lady Lavinia Bourne and her family for his absence over much of the weekend. I have no doubt that once he has smoothed matters over, arrangements for his marriage will proceed as originally planned.’
Mrs Shipley walked back to the table and picked up the envelope and the cheque and thrust them at
Martha. ‘It won’t take him long to get over his foolish infatuation for you. Once he comprehends what an accomplished liar you are he’ll be only too glad to see the back of you and marry Lady Lavinia. If she’ll still have him.’
Martha stared at the envelope and gave a little sob. ‘I don’t want your money.’
‘No, I’m sure you don’t. But I insist you take it. I can’t have you wandering the streets or hanging around the village. One of the grooms is going to drive you into Ledford and put you on the next train to London. Whether you stay there or move on somewhere else is up to you. But don’t come back here.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘You’d better hurry.’
Martha got to her feet.
Mrs Shipley had moved towards the window and had her back to her. Over her shoulder, she said, ‘And don’t try to contact my son. He doesn’t want to hear from you. He certainly doesn’t want to see you again. I only wish I had disillusioned him sooner, before he had the misfortune to follow his father into your bed.’
Chapter 14
Christopher drove down the driveway from St Crispin’s, his head full of conflicting thoughts. He had travelled here today in the expectation that he would either disprove what his mother had told him, or that he would see the woman who was his half-sister and be filled with disgust and loathing for her.
Now he knew. Jane was definitely who his mother had told him she was. When they had sat under the oak tree he’d seen Martha in her eyes and there was something about the line of her jaw that was unmistakably a Shipley inheritance.
But to suggest to the doctor that Jane should come to live with them? What had possessed him? What had he meant? How could he possibly bring her home to Newlands and force her presence on his mother? And what about his plans to go abroad?
He tried to see the situation from Edwina’s point of view. He abhorred the manner in which she had told him about Jane’s existence, the way she had been heedless of hurting him. But he couldn’t help but feel some pity for his mother in being forced to live for twenty years in the knowledge that her husband had betrayed her and fathered a child with one of the servants on the estate, a child herself at the time. How had she accepted it? How had she lived with that knowledge for so long? But he knew the answer to that. Edwina Shipley would never have contemplated the scandal of a divorce or the shame and disgrace of the circumstances that had occasioned it. Nor would she willingly have forgone the status and wealth that marriage to George Shipley and the bounty of his vast industrial empire bestowed upon her. No wonder she wanted rid of Martha now. He speculated as to why she hadn’t done it before and could find no satisfactory answer. Perhaps she’d felt it was inappropriate for her to be dealing with such matters. Had she wanted to pretend she didn’t know anything about what had taken place? And to avoid a scene with Martha? Discretion had always been a by-word for his mother.
But Jane? She was a different matter. At first Christopher had felt fear and, yes, even a little disgust at the creature with the blank dead eyes and the slumped posture, but their walk in the grounds had changed all that. He remembered the way her small hands had felt in his, the way the light had eventually come into her eyes, how she’d responded to being outdoors, to being awoken by the presence of the natural world.
When she’d offered the buttercup to him, he’d felt a surge of affection for her. It was as if, under the layers of what the doctor had described as her idiocy, she had a dormant sensibility. He felt in his pocket for the buttercup. It was still there.
What he had not yet managed to confront, was how all this made him feel about Martha. What had changed since yesterday to alter how he felt about her? Until yesterday, he had wanted her physically with a passion he had never experienced before – but he was unsure if he could feel that way about her now, knowing she had lied to him and borne a child with his father and possibly colluded in Jane’s incarceration. Yet everything in Christopher’s head and his heart screamed out that Martha would never knowingly have denied her daughter’s existence nor conceded to her being locked away. And never willingly succumbed to his father’s advances, no matter what his mother might think or say. Something inside told him that he must trust his heart, not listen to his head.
Driving through villages and towns, past farmland and forest, factories and railway stations, Christopher asked himself over and over again what he should do now. Confront his mother? Talk to Martha?
He knew what he wanted to happen. He couldn’t go to Borneo any more, and instead he knew with a certainty that was unsupported by any practical plans to make it a reality, that he wanted to live in the little house in the copse, with Martha and, God willing, eventually with Jane. He wanted to be the one who would unite mother and daughter, be the means by which his sister might one day be able to function away from the institution in which otherwise she would be condemned to see out her days.
And yet, his head told him such a plan was fraught with impracticalities. How could he live on the estate under the nose of his mother, inflicting what she would see as a terrible humiliation upon her? And Jane? How would Martha herself react? How much did she know? Over and over he mulled these points in his head until his temples throbbed and his palms were clammy on the steering wheel.
The war may have changed many things, but he knew it wouldn’t have lessened the tendency of people to gossip, to criticise, to condemn. Any attempt to bring Jane Walters to live on the Newlands estate would result in the shaming and dishonouring of Martha and he couldn’t put her through that. The only way he could make his wish a reality would be for the three of them to leave Newlands and move somewhere where no one would know them.
As he mulled the idea over in his head, the more it appealed to him. He could earn his living pursuing his research at the university or for the Royal Horticultural Society – or failing that, become a teacher – and forgo any claims on the estate. He could marry Martha. No one need know that Jane was her daughter – she could easily pass as her sister. His mother would be furious, but he wasn’t going to let her reactions rule him. It was his life not hers.
Christopher reached the gates of Newlands by early evening. The sky was aflame in a brilliant sunset with ripples of red and orange cutting through the tracery of clouds. He drove the motor car off the main driveway and onto the gravel track that led to the cottage in the woods.
There was no light coming from the windows. He walked across the grassy clearing and knocked on the door, impatient to find out the truth from Martha. She had lied to him about his father but what of Jane? He could believe she had lied about George Shipley, probably out of shame and fear, but he refused to believe that she had allowed her child to be locked away in an asylum.
Silence.
He walked round to the rear of the cottage. The curtains were undrawn and the rooms were all in darkness. He heard a fox barking and jumped. His nerves were raw.
He tried the handle of the door and it opened. He walked inside and checked the downstairs rooms but there was no sign of Martha. The kettle on the stove was cold, and the grate was full of cold ashes and did not appear to have been cleared and laid since the previous night. Opening the door to the stairway, he bounded up the stairs as quickly as his wooden leg would permit him. Memories of their walk the previous day past the toadstools chilled his blood. Panic that his mother had talked to Martha sliced through him. No. Please, God. No.
He didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed when he didn’t find Martha in the bedroom.
* * *
‘Where is she?’ Christopher burst into the library where his mother was enjoying one of her favourite cocktails. She was standing in front of the fireplace, twirling a swizzle stick inside the concoction.
‘Calm down, darling. We don’t want the servants to hear. You know what this place is like. As soon as you say anything it’s all over the kitchens and within five minutes the whole village knows our affairs.’ She tutted. ‘Let me get you a drink. I’m having a Gin Fizz. You?’
C
hristopher ignored her and went to the sideboard and poured himself a large scotch. He was beginning to develop a taste for it.
‘You’re as bad as your father, Christopher. I’ll never understand why Englishmen are so dreary about cocktails. At least dear Percy would indulge me once in a while. But you… Really, I despair. And according to the papers today there’s growing pressure to prohibit alcohol altogether in the United States. What kind of a world are we living in?’ She flung herself into an armchair. ‘What did we fight a war for if we can’t even enjoy the peace?’
‘Why do you have to trivialise everything, Mother?’ Christopher moved to stand in front of the fire opposite her. ‘I asked you a question, so answer me. Where is Martha?’
Mrs Shipley took a sip from her drink and narrowed her eyes. ‘I have absolutely no idea where the gamekeeper’s wife is – if it is she to whom you are referring.’ She crossed her legs. She was wearing a dress in green chartreuse silk, and the movement showed off her trim silk-clad ankles. She flexed her foot to admire it. ‘All I can tell you is she left on the train from Ledford to London this morning. But don’t worry, I made sure she was amply compensated. She was only too willing to accept a nice fat cheque.’
Christopher felt sick. His hand shook and he struggled to form words. Nothing his mother was saying rang true about Martha. Being bought off? He couldn’t believe it. He wouldn’t believe it.
The arrival of Bannister to announce dinner cut short any reply Kit might have made. Walking into the dining room he felt hollowed out and empty. Life at Newlands had seemed empty and pointless after his experiences on the Western Front, but now, in the face of his mother’s refusal to confront the truth of what George Shipley had done and the legacy he had left in the form of Jane Walters, he could tolerate it no longer. He despised his mother, with her devotion to fine clothes and cocktails, her nostalgia for the pre-war days, her obsession over her position in society, and her vicarious pleasure at her son’s matrimonial prospects. But how could he hate her? She was his mother. Despite her faults, her vanity, her insatiable hunger for acceptance, wasn’t he duty-bound to feel love for her? But he couldn’t. Maybe he never had. He’d always respected her but he no longer knew what respect for her was either.
