by Nicola Upson
It was hard to say if the final comment was a compliment or a curse, but again Josephine found the fellowship that it implied disturbing. ‘I imagine that even kings feel a duty to the women they love,’ she said.
‘Duty and love are rarely connected, in my experience.’ Deliberate or not, her response gave Josephine the perfect opportunity to raise the subject of Hester’s broken engagement, but the moment was snatched from her before she opened her mouth. ‘Did you resent it at first?’
The question wrong-footed her. ‘Resent what?’
‘The assumption that you would come running back and do your duty when your mother died.’
‘I didn’t come running back,’ Josephine said, a little too quickly. ‘I worked in England for three more years, finished what I wanted to do and came back when I was ready. So it wasn’t really like that.’
‘Oh, it’s always like that, whether you admit it to yourself or not. Preferring not to marry, putting your work first – it’s a dangerous choice, and you pay for it in the end.’ She turned the fire off, although the room was anything but warm. ‘I went away to college, just like you. Mine was secretarial, of course. I had hoped that I might go to Edinburgh after that, or even to London, work for a busy chambers, perhaps. Then Cameron had his stroke and my parents were too old to look after him, and my sister . . .’ She laughed to herself, thinking back. ‘Well, my sister couldn’t get up the aisle quick enough. So it was all down to me. It’s a shame, really. I was good at what I did. I’ve always been good at managing other people’s lives. If I’d known it was at the expense of having one of my own, I might have chosen a different path.’
‘They say it’s never too late to make a fresh start.’ Good God, Josephine thought, listening to herself; where on earth had that come from? She deserved the derisive sneer that came her way.
‘I expect better than that from you, Miss Tey. I won’t be patronised, and you of all people should know how it feels to be pitied.’
‘That wasn’t what I intended.’
‘Good. Because it’s all a sham. People are always saying how good we are to stay at home, aren’t they? I get that all the time from my sister. I expect yours are the same – they treat you as a race apart, fill you with saintly qualities that make it easy to do what you do, when they never could. It’s gratifying at first, isn’t it? It gives you a sense of worth for a while, until you realise why they do it – to make sure you’ll carry on. But I’m not a saint, are you, Miss Tey?’
‘No.’ Josephine did not trust herself to say any more. Everything that Jane Peck had said was true, and it frightened her that this woman should see so easily into her darkest soul, laying bare the anger and despair that she thought she had kept hidden, even from herself.
‘No, you’re not a saint. And yet people will look back at your life when you’re gone and talk about the sacrifice you’ve made. They’ll pity you for it, and what a blow that will be to your pride! You’ll look down from wherever you are – or up, of course – and you’ll want to scream at them to stop, but it will be too late by then. If you think they talk about you now, just wait until you’re dead.’ Something in the controlled calm of this speech told Josephine how carefully it had all been prepared; there was no doubt in her mind now that Jane Peck had known she would come, that she had waited here for days for the chance to bring Josephine face to face with her own demons; the only question was whether she had done it before with Hester, and how much she would admit. ‘Still, at least that sacrifice will be recognised, because you’re famous. Others make it, and just fade quietly away. Faded. That’s how I’ve always felt.’ Josephine’s blush gave her away, and Jane Peck acknowledged it. ‘I see that’s how you think of me, too. And what was it all for? I wonder. Cameron wasn’t even a war hero, for God’s sake, just an invalid. Sometimes I used to think that would have been so much easier. I watched those women, caring for their heroic sick, united by some sort of collective tragedy, and I envied them that solidarity.’
‘I’m not sure they would give it the nobility you seem to think it should have. A wasted life is a wasted life, no matter how worthwhile you’re told the cause is.’
She refused to rise to the bait. ‘But at least they knew they weren’t alone. That’s the point. I’ve always been alone. And it should never have been me, should it? We may as well get round to why you’re here. It should have been Hester Larkspur.’
In the end, the question came easily to Josephine, and she matched Jane Peck’s composure word for deadly word. ‘Did you kill Hester?’
It was as though she had never spoken. ‘She made a fool of Cameron from the very beginning. It wasn’t hard to do, not to a man like him, but she achieved it with a certain panache, I must say. She came home less often from those theatre tours and it was obvious that she’d met someone else, but he wouldn’t have it. Not his precious Hester. Even when she left him, he wouldn’t have a word said against her. Is that love or foolishness, do you think? I could never tell, being a stranger to both.’
‘I’m sure Hester didn’t mean to humiliate your brother. She told my mother that . . .’
‘Oh, I’m not saying she meant to humiliate him; I’m saying she was too selfish to care whether she did or not, or even to notice.’ Hand on heart, from what she knew of Hester, Josephine would have found it hard to disagree. ‘Let me tell you what Cameron said to me one day . . . well, not said exactly; slurred would be more accurate. His speech never really came back, thank God, but you know what I mean. He said that Hester had had a lucky escape, that she would never have wanted to be burdened with him, not a woman like her. It was fine for a woman like me, though. How do you think that made me feel, Josephine? Did I deserve that? Could he not understand that it was he who had turned me into that sort of woman?’
For the first time, Jane Peck seemed to be genuinely seeking some sort of reassurance from Josephine, rather than using their common situation as a weapon. ‘I’m not surprised you were angry,’ she said cautiously.
‘Angry doesn’t even begin to describe it. It’s funny, isn’t it, but not even a writer like you can find a word for what I was.’ The scorn was already back in her voice. ‘Cameron kept a photograph of Hester Larkspur by his bed until the day he died. I would have let it go then, you know – that’s the truth. But when I was clearing out his things, ready to sell the house, I found a newspaper that he’d kept. It was just a small piece, but it said that Hester was about to star in a film. That was more than I could bear, I’m afraid. I suppose I’d felt better about it all since Walter died and she gave up what she loved. It seemed like justice of a sort. When things were bad with Cameron, I’d think of Hester growing old in that cottage and what utter loneliness would do to someone like her, someone who’d always been adored; how she’d cope when the fan letters began to dwindle and fewer people came to call, when she looked in the mirror and realised it was ridiculous to suppose that she would ever know passion again, that she would ever be needed. I knew how bitter she would become, and one of the worst things about bitterness is that it makes you paranoid. You stop trusting, and you see something tainted in even the purest friendship. You turn against everyone, and you end up being your own worst enemy.’
She had described Hester’s gradual isolation so perfectly that it took Josephine’s breath away. ‘I thought she might finally have learned that she couldn’t just take what she wanted. But no. Hester was making a comeback, the centre of attention all over again, because Hester had to be loved, damn it. Hester’s God-given right on this planet was to be loved.’ Her anger had got the better of her at last, and Josephine noticed how tightly she gripped the arm of her chair, how the colour had drained from her face; for the first time, she was afraid of more than what she might hear. ‘And the casualty of that was never Cameron – he fooled himself right to the end. It was my life that Hester destroyed – my dreams, my independence, my right to love. I even had to give up my job in the end. Oh, I know you don’t think it’s much – I can se
e that in your face when you come into the office. But it’s been everything to me – sanity, respite, money, and most important of all, self-respect. You see, I’ve never had much of that, Josephine. I’ve never turned heads. When Cameron was alive, I’d undress every night and look at my body in the mirror, touch myself just to imagine what it would be like to be loved. And in the end, I accepted that was all I would ever know.’
She ran her fingers over her breast, and Josephine could stand it no longer. ‘This is sick,’ she said, getting up to go. ‘I don’t have to listen to it.’
‘Of course you don’t – but you will, because you want to find out what I’ve done.’ She was right, of course, and Josephine returned to her chair, despising her own meekness. ‘I’ll never forget that first visit to your cottage,’ she said sarcastically. ‘I’d gone for some money, that’s all. A one-off payment for everything I’d given up. When I knocked on the door, I expected to be greeted by the same old Hester, the one who thought she had me eating out of her hand whenever she came to the office; the one who so generously forgave me for my little outburst at the theatre. I suppose you know about that?’
Josephine nodded. ‘I went to see Tod Slaughter. He told me he recognised you at the funeral.’
‘Quite the little sleuth. Good practice for your books, I suppose. But anyway, this Hester was very different – frail, and all but blind. It shocked me, I have to say. She didn’t know who I was until I opened my mouth, and then she tried to bluff her way through it, but I could see how vulnerable she was. There was no fight when I asked her for money, you know. I took it and left, never imagining I’d see her again – but then I thought about how easy it had been, and how little I’d actually got for all those years, so I went back, supposedly to apologise and to make sure that we parted on good terms. I knew by then that the money wasn’t enough, though. I wanted Hester to suffer like I had. I wanted to make her life a misery.’
‘What did you do?’ Josephine asked, dreading the answer but needing to know.
‘Oh, made her home a little less comfortable. Moved things around so that she fell over them – furniture in the house, statues on the paths in her precious garden, the rope to the outhouse. I took the lid from the kettle so that the steam would burn her. Small things, really – all easy and quick to do while I was using her toilet or making her a cup of tea. It’s not as though she was watching me.’
‘Small things like taking the lid off the hotplate?’ Josephine asked, remembering Rose’s testimony to the burns on Hester’s arms and allowing herself to imagine the agony they must have caused.
‘Exactly. And changing things round in the cupboard so that her food would be disgusting – salt for sugar, that sort of thing. It never occurred to me that she’d stop eating because of it.’
Josephine recalled the chaos of those cupboards when she had first moved in, the bleach and the ant powder next to the food. ‘It’s a wonder she didn’t poison herself.’
‘Isn’t it? And it was such a shame about the dog.’ She smiled, and Josephine longed to wipe it from her face. ‘But they were all things that could be put down to an old woman on her own, unable to cope. Hester needed someone to look after her, really, but I’d had enough of that.’
‘How long were you there, for God’s sake?’
‘I came and went a few times – after all, Hester was effectively paying my rail fare and I had no responsibilities up here any more. It was nice to get out and see the countryside. But she went downhill so quickly. Too quickly, really.’
‘Did she know what you were doing?’
‘No, of course not. She blamed the girl who charred for her, or some children from the village. And this is going to sound ridiculous, perhaps, but she was convinced that the cottage was haunted.’
‘So you started on her mind, as well. She’d hear you moving about the cottage and it terrified her. Were you there the day Rose went round to see her?’
‘Yes, I was. She did me a favour, really, that girl. I was shocked when she just walked in. It made me realise that I’d been pushing my luck, that Hester wasn’t quite as isolated as I thought. She was half out of her mind by then anyway, so I stepped things up a bit.’ Josephine had no doubt that Jane Peck would be only too happy to be more specific, but she couldn’t bear to hear the details. ‘In the end, the mighty Miss Larkspur was so frightened that she crawled into a hole like an animal. All I had to do was wait to make sure that she never came out. I didn’t lay a finger on her.’
She wore it almost as a badge of pride, a mark of her own achievement, and Josephine hated her for it. ‘You didn’t have to,’ she said scathingly. ‘You frightened her to death.’
‘Yes, I suppose I did. It all goes back to that night at the theatre, now I think about it. There was a character called Daisy in one of the plays. She was an arrogant, insensitive little bitch, just like Hester, and she died of fright. Hester played the charwoman who found her body – not very convincingly, I must say – but I suppose that sowed the seed. Funny how those little things get stored away. It was called The Person Unknown, and I remember thinking at the time how appropriate a description that was for women like me.’
‘Jesus, you disgust me.’ Josephine stood up and walked across to the window, torn between her urge to get away from the house and her need to retaliate somehow on Hester’s behalf.
‘Do I, Josephine? I’m not sure I care. What matters to me is that Hester knew real fear before she died, the sort of fear that’s been with me my whole life. You understand that, surely?’
She came over to join Josephine and stood quietly at her shoulder, their reflections side by side in the glass. The shadows of the room made each face pale and insubstantial, one a mirror image of the other, and the illusion of similarity gave Josephine a new strength, a determination to destroy once and for all the idea that there might be any sort of common ground between them. ‘Don’t even begin to suggest that I understand what you’ve done,’ she said, her voice low and steady. ‘You have no idea what real fear is. Anger, yes, and bitterness and regret, but we all have those. You’re not the only person who’s screamed against the unfairness of it all, who’s longed to hurt the thing that’s hurting them. But we don’t do it – that’s the difference. And neither of us has ever truly understood the fear that Hester felt in those last few hours, when she knew that her life was over.’
‘Don’t we?’ She searched Josephine’s eyes, and it was all Josephine could do not to flinch and look away. ‘I do, and I’ll admit that even if you won’t. I understood it from the moment that Cameron had his stroke and they told me how serious it was, from that first night when I sat by his bed and watched him breathe my life away.’
Josephine could not speak for a moment. She remembered how she had felt as she sat by her mother’s bedside during the final days of her illness, willing her to live, even though her face was contorted with pain and the morphia had ceased to make a difference. She had looked like a ghost under the sheets, a spirit who might drift away at any moment, and yet her hand had gripped Josephine’s with a strength that would not have been possible but for her reluctance to leave her daughter. Josephine had clung to her – from love, yes, but also from a selfish fear of what this would mean to her own life, and she tried now to be honest with herself in the face of Jane Peck’s accusation. She thought about the years that had passed since her mother’s death, about her father’s kindness and about the resentment that had faded, while the loss and the grief still had the power to engulf her, and she knew she had her answer. ‘There’s nothing to admit,’ she said, ‘because duty for me has always been about love. That’s the difference between you and I.’ For once, Jane Peck seemed silenced. Josephine had no appetite to continue the conversation any longer, but she needed to know everything. ‘After Hester died, you took her things and sold them,’ she said, although this hardly seemed to matter now.
‘So what if I did? All that pious nonsense in the will about the important things in life not b
eing of monetary value . . . that’s easy enough to say when you’ve got money. What do you think it’s like to pay rent for the house you grew up in, the house your father worked hard all his life to own?’ She looked scornfully at Josephine. ‘You can afford to be your mother’s daughter when your father owns half of Castle Street, taking money off tenants like me, and you sit there in a fine house at the head of the town, looking down on the rest of us like God on His cloud. What makes you so special? I’ve worked whenever I could, just like you, and this house should be mine now. Shouldn’t I be allowed a little pride in this town after what I’ve done for my family? But no. Everyone talks, I know they do. Sometimes people don’t see you quite quickly enough, do they? They open their mouths and the poison’s out there, and it eats away at you. You know what that’s like.’
