A Dark Devotion

by Clare Francis

  In the hall I was confused to recognize the central lantern and wall sconces and realized my parents must have sold them with the house.

  ‘It’s mainly this side of the house,’ Anne said. ‘Come and see.’ I followed her across the hall into the kitchen and was immediately confused again, this time because nothing was in the slightest familiar. Even the view through the bay window was distorted and diminished by a distance it had never had in my day, a distance achieved by removing an entire intervening wall. It was as if a hand had reached in and wrenched the core from the centre of the house. I felt I was looking through the wrong end of a telescope. A bright modern kitchen now led into a bright modem dining area. The old sitting room, so lovingly decorated by my mother, so warm and serene in the morning sun, might never have existed. The eau-de-nil panelling had gone, the pale chintz curtains too; now there were white walls and blinds and spotlights, no tranquillity in the space any more, just modernity.

  ‘Can I look around the rest of the house?’

  ‘Of course! Let me show you!’

  ‘Would you mind if I went on my own?’

  She laid a hand on my arm and narrowed her eyes sympathetically. ‘I understand!’ she cried. ‘Childhood memories!’

  I went upstairs to my mother’s bedroom. New wallpaper, new curtains, yet the past was still here, in the light, in the wide windows, in the chair placed to catch the best of the view. During the long years of her illness, my mother had always been torn between the sunlight and the sea. While she could still manage the stairs, she would spend most of the morning in the sitting room taking warmth from the morning sun, before coming up here to sit and read and watch the afternoon light on the marshes. She liked it best when the air was dry and clear, when, far out under the sky, beyond the line of the dunes, she could see the long glittering ribbon of the sea.

  When the first symptoms of her illness appeared my mother hadn’t said anything to my father. She hadn’t wanted to worry him, though I had often wondered if, as a doctor’s wife, she hadn’t feared his disappointment too. Instead, she went to an old friend of my father’s, a GP with a large practice in Cambridge, who told her that the weakness in her muscles, the pins and needles in her legs, the depression and loss of memory were just symptoms of anxiety, the result of an inability to cope. He told her she had simply taken on too much; she must learn to take life more calmly.

  My mother said no more for a year, not until her right foot began to drag and she tripped in Burnham Market and fell heavily on top of her shopping. The raspberries in her bag stained her dress the colour of blood.

  My father was a diligent and humane doctor; he would make endless visits to the sick, the bereaved and terminally ill. His manner was cheerful and uplifting, his compassion practical and unsentimental, he believed in the power of positive thought and the avoidance of gloom. Nothing in this rather simplistic philosophy prepared him for my mother’s illness; nothing could disguise the fact that none of the magical drugs in his considerable arsenal was able to cure her. As the years went by his cheerfulness acquired a brittle edge, his optimism became an exercise in determination. He found it hard to come to terms with the changes in my mother’s personality. In those days the treatment consisted of large doses of corticosteroids whose side effects were terrible, both demeaning and distressing. Over time my mother suffered massive weight gain and oedema. Her body grew bloated, her face almost unrecognizable. She became easily upset, uncharacteristically angry and hopelessly depressed. For a time my father was confused and angry, then, slowly but resolutely, he withdrew behind a veneer of detachment and cheerfulness.

  Nowadays they hardly ever prescribe steroids in the treatment of multiple sclerosis.

  My old room had been decorated with floral wallpaper and matching curtains and fitted with built-in cupboards. Standing in the doorway, random images flickered through my mind, a jumble of years and seasons and activities, through which a sense of my own unconcern and optimism meandered like a thread. While my mother’s health had not been deteriorating too obviously, while Edward had been small and not yet angry with life, I had never imagined anything would change, certainly not our future in this house.

  I glanced into the other bedrooms before going downstairs again to peer into the drawing room and what had been slur dining room, now a study.

  ‘Well?’ Anne cried from the kitchen door. ‘What do you think? We wanted to put a conservatory at the back but in the end—well, we live in the kitchen. We felt it’d be rather a waste.’

  She showed me to a seat in the breakfast area. As she chattered on, I had the illusion that she was speaking in two voices, the one I’d heard on first meeting her at Marsh House, and the one I’d heard on the answerphone message. I wanted to ask if it had been her on the machine, but something made me pause. It was possible the message had been entirely innocent, the supportive words of an old friend. It was also possible that my more imaginative suspicions were correct, and from my work I knew that if you don’t want to hear the answer then you don’t ask the question.

  The skin of her cheeks was less vivid today, as if the allergy had temporarily subsided. This had the effect of making the yellowness of her hair less obvious, and she looked pretty in an open unaffected sort of way. Nothing could stem her flow of talk, however, nor her inability to pause and listen. She had a nervous jollity which wore away at you like a constant rubbing on the same spot. I wondered how Grace and she had become such friends.

  “…Such a support, you know. Just when I needed her. You don’t find many people like that, do you?’

  ‘No,’ I replied vaguely, supposing we were talking about Grace.

  A door slammed, followed by a low call of greeting. Julian Hampton strode in and introduced himself with the brisk smile of the busy doctor. ‘Shall we repair to the study?’ he suggested firmly, as if to forestall argument, and I couldn’t help thinking that he repaired to his study rather more often than Anne Hampton would have liked.

  He led the way across the hall to a room containing a large desk, a TV, several shelves of videos and an easy chair incorporating head and footrests.

  Julian Hampton placed a chair in front of the desk and gestured me towards it. He was a tall man, six-three or -four, slim and straight-backed with a receding hairline and brown hair fashionably cut and carefully brushed. He wore an immaculate grey suit, a blue and white spotted bow tie and matching blue shirt. He had a bony face with a long nose and small blue eyes behind rectangular gold-rimmed spectacles. He looked more like a senior consultant than a GP; the suit was certainly expensive enough.

  ‘I’m representing the Deardens,’ I began, as he took his place behind the desk.

  ‘So I gather,’ he said in the same rather brisk manner as before.

  ‘I wouldn’t ask you to break patient confidentiality, but I was wondering if you could give me some idea of whether you believe the police are right to rule out suicide.’

  ‘You mean, was Grace depressed?’ He had a way of staring directly at you without blinking or averting his eyes. ‘The answer is no, she wasn’t. I would say they’re fairly safe to rule out suicide.’

  ‘And intentional disappearance? I mean, as a result of psychological problems?’

  His gaze slid away at last. ‘Unlikely.’

  ‘And there was no medical condition that could have resulted in an accident of any kind? No history of blackouts, fainting fits, epilepsy or a heart condition, that sort of thing?’

  He remarked in passing, ‘Not a doctor’s daughter for nothing.’

  ‘There have to be some advantages.’ I added a smile.

  He said in a weighty professional tone, ‘There was no condition like that. Nothing that could account for a sudden blackout.’

  I shrugged. ‘I just thought I should make sure.’

  He leant forward and, resting his elbows on the desk, made a steeple of his hands. He hesitated slightly. ‘You didn’t know Grace, did you?’

  ‘Not really, no.’
>
  ‘She had extraordinary…’ He chose his word carefully. ‘…energy. She had…’ Another small pause, a testing of the atmosphere, as though he wasn’t sure how much he could safely tell me. ‘…a great appetite for life.’

  I was careful not to show too much interest in my face. ‘Oh?’

  We eyed each other—I waiting, he coming to a decision about something. ‘Speaking as a friend rather than a doctor,’ he ventured cautiously, ‘from what I knew of her personally, so to speak…I would say she was a…restless spirit.’ He frowned at the description, as though marginally dissatisfied with it, but appeared to find nothing better.

  I waited again, in case he said more. Finally I murmured, ‘A searcher, then.’

  We seemed to be getting each other’s drift. ‘Yes,’ he replied quietly, ‘a searcher.’ Another inner debate and he ventured, ‘Very beautiful, of course. Much noticed. Much admired.’

  Again I waited. Again he seemed to be in a state of indecision. Finally he said, ‘But beauty isn’t always enough, is it?’

  ‘For those who have it?’

  ‘Indeed. For those who have it.’ He stood up suddenly, as if he had said enough. When he shook my hand at the front door he raised his voice against the wind and said, ‘Wish I could have been more help.’

  It was only as I got into the car that I realized he had talked about Grace in the past tense.

  I drove up to the village, which was little more than a ribbon of cottages and shops strung haphazardly along the main road. The weather had kept most people away. A woman scuttled out of the fishmonger’s-cum-cafe and dived for her car. A man trudged the pavement with his collar up and head down, accompanied by a dog with wind-blown fur and flattened ears.

  A lone car came from the opposite direction and I recognized the now familiar four-wheel drive of Barry Holland. It drew up in front of the hardware shop and, passing it, I glimpsed Barry in the driver’s seat. By the time I had parked outside the post office he had disappeared into the shop.

  The post office still bore the name Evans on an amateurish hand-painted sign over the door, but the interior had been modernized and extended. In addition to newspapers, sweets and birthday cards, it now offered travellers’ food and emergency groceries. Among the breads milk and eggs, there was even a choice of Perrier or Evian. The young woman who took my money had been a child when I had last seen her; I didn’t try to introduce myself. But her mother, appearing from the back room with an armful of stock, said immediately, ‘Well, hello, Alex! How are you?’

  I smiled, ‘I’m all right, Mrs Evans.’

  She was a cheerful woman with wiry grey hair and round cheeks, who had lived in the village all her life. While she filled a shelf with chocolate bars we talked about how long it had been, and where I was living, and the dreadful weather. Pausing behind the counter, Mrs Evans said how sorry she had been to hear about my father’s death.

  ‘Your father was sorely missed when you all moved away,’ she said solemnly. ‘A real old-fashioned doctor. Used to come out at all hours. When Cherry got the asthma’—she tipped her head towards her daughter—‘he was round at three in the morning, no questions asked. Not like now. Now you get phone advice from some stand-in bloke you’ve never met.’ She shrugged philosophically. ‘But then the whole village has changed, I suppose. Newcomers, weekend types, commuters. Get the lot now.’ She smiled abruptly. ‘So what brings you back? Visiting your brother?’

  ‘Partly.’

  ‘Don’t see much of him in the village. But then he’s off and away quite a bit, isn’t he?’

  ‘I suppose he is, yes.’

  A pause while she eyed the stack of newspapers I had bought. ‘Terrible thing about Grace Dearden. Such a lovely person. Always a smile, you know. Always a nice word.’ Her open face assumed a pessimistic expression, she lowered her voice respectfully. ‘Can’t help thinking it doesn’t look good.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Well, someone like that—so full of life, wasn’t she?’

  ‘I didn’t know her that well.’

  ‘Oh, always bright and cheerful. Always the busy one. Organizing things. Rushing about. Getting the whole place going. Lovely little Charlie. No reason to up and off of her own accord.’

  I made a show of taking this in. ‘No, I suppose not.’

  ‘Dreadful for Will Dearden, of course,’ said Mrs Evans in a tone of sympathy. ‘They go searching, he and the men, almost every day. All over.’

  I tucked the newspapers under my arm. ‘Nice to see you again, Mrs Evans.’

  ‘Don’t forget your chocolate.’

  Chocolate was meant to be a banned substance—I was prone to migraines—but I weakened whenever I was cold or stressed. Sitting in the icy car, I quickly ate my way through half the bar before starting on the papers.

  I went through the down-market tabloids first. With growing disbelief I searched them a second time. Only one had covered the appeal at all, four lines hidden away on a middle page; none had printed a picture of Grace. Presumably her disappearance had been deemed too dull for their readers and—I took a guess—her status too up-market. Yet the broadsheets were almost as bad. Only one had published Grace’s picture, while the others carried the story as a minor item on the home pages. Alone out of the nationals, the Mail had given the story real space. Opening it, I was immediately transfixed by the main picture. It showed Grace and Will arriving at some function, Will in a dinner jacket, Grace in a pale clinging dress that looked as though it had cost a packet. The neckline was low, the straps thin, the wide expanse of neck offset by a wide choker of pearls. Her hair was swept up into an elaborate knot which accentuated the perfect heart shape of her face. Under the effect of the flashbulb her eyes, subtly accentuated by makeup, were doe-shaped and beguiling, while her mouth was set in the sweet shy smile that was so characteristic of her. She was triumphantly beautiful. By no stretch of the imagination did she look like a farmer’s wife. I could see the angle the paper was going for, I could see why they had given it almost a whole page. A woman this beautiful was bound to get into trouble, a woman this well dressed could only bring financial ruin to a man of anything but ample means. Ergo, this disappearance was not as simple as it seemed. Ergo, the decision to show Grace and Will together so that the readers could make up their minds about what had really happened.

  The picture did Will no favours. His eyes were narrowed, his mouth pulled down into an irritable line, miserable, no doubt, at being dragged out to a black-tie affair. To a stranger, though, he would look bad-tempered and mean spirited and jealous, someone with a fundamentally antagonistic view of the worlds who probably ran on an extremely short fuse.

  The second smaller picture showed Will at the press conference. He was looking troubled, but a cynic might say that he didn’t seem all that heartbroken.

  The story itself said nothing and everything, treading the narrow line between truth and insinuation so beloved of certain newspapers. Grace was popular, a leading light on the social scene, newspaper-speak for being much admired and having plenty of opportunities to fall for someone else; she was known for her charity work, a saintly exterior being a good front for strong passions; finally, she was not believed to have had any worries, which meant that suicide was ruled out. Will, on the other hand, was a tenant farmer, and thus a bit of a yokel; he had been forced to sell off some of his land, which meant he was broke and had killed Grace for the life insurance; and he had made a televised appeal which, read against the rest of the story, meant that the police knew he was guilty.

  Plunged into gloom, wondering what could have persuaded me to pressurize Will into making the appeal against his judgement, I ate my way doggedly through the rest of the chocolate.

  A shadow darkened the window, someone tapped on the glass, and I looked up to see Jilly huddled under the hood of a Barbour.

  ‘I didn’t know you were still here,’ she said when I had wound down the window. ‘Edward thought you’d gone back.’

  ‘
I stayed on. Not working today?’

  ‘No.’

  I could never remember quite what Jilly did in Cambridge. Something to do with language tapes, or perhaps information technology.

  ‘Will you be staying tonight?’ Her breathless voice was scooped up by the wind. ‘The bed’s still made up.’

  ‘Thanks, but I’m okay.’

  ‘Oh, well.’ She gave a nervous little smile and glanced away before coming closer to the window. She seemed to be gearing herself up to say something. ‘Terrible weather,’ she offered rather desperately. ‘There’s a flood warning.’

  When we had agreed on this, she searched around for another topic. ‘No more news…?’

  ‘No.’

  Gathering her courage, she finally got it out. ‘Just as well you’re not staying, actually. Edward’s in a frightful state.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Will Dearden’s refused to sign the transfer.’ When I failed to react, Jilly explained rapidly, ‘The sale of the Gun Marsh, it’s all off! He says he’s not prepared to give it up after all! Edward’s furious. I’ve never seen him so angry.’

  ‘Well, these things do happen.’

  ‘He gave no reason, Will Dearden, no reason at all. Not so much as a letter.’

  I had the feeling I knew where this was leading. ‘He doesn’t have to give a reason.’

  ‘Oh, but perhaps it’s something that could be sorted out. Something silly.’ When I didn’t help her along, she said, ‘You couldn’t…well…you know…‘It was a terrible effort for her to say it. ‘Have a word with him?’

  ‘No, Jilly. It’s nothing to do with me. I couldn’t interfere.’

  Her face fell. ‘I just thought…I mean, if we just knew the reason…And you’ll be seeing him…Just a hint of why…’

  ‘I really couldn’t, Jilly. Under the circumstances, it would be totally inappropriate.’

  She tried to look resigned to this but only succeeded in looking wretched.

  ‘Edward will survive it, Jilly. It’s not the end of the world.’

  She stared at me as though I had understood nothing. ‘But he won’t!’ she cried. ‘He won’t!’