One of George’s notes was sat on the coffee table as I leafed through my cookery books one afternoon. It was a request for a Madeira cake for George’s brother in Oxworth. It was a favourite of his and would be appreciated (‘most awfully’) on his next visit. One of the books, Mrs Beeton, fell open in my lap, the divide in the pages marked by a lifeless flower – a violet pressed between the pages. It doubled over when I took it in my fingers, transparent like tracing paper. I looked at it with fascination; it was ten years since I had hidden it there but it was still the deepest hue.
I did not think of my lover at first, but of Ruby. And of how I had watched her as she stood by the flower beds at the garden party. How she had stooped to pick a pansy, her eyes drawn to the one with the blue petals. How she had held it close to her chest, then dropped her chin to smell it, her deep breaths magnified by the rise and fall of her fist. How she had buried her nose in the centre, the petals sucked flat against her nostrils as if she was drinking the scent – movements so tiny yet somehow triggering an old memory.
It was good weather for violets in the summer of 1935 – just like it had been in 1925, all those long summers ago. Ten years had passed but I remembered that year so well. It had been so hot back then that I would stand at my bedroom window and watch my lover wipe sweat from his brow as he waited at the war memorial, always knowing that the glint of the sun on the glass made me invisible to his gaze. He would shuffle his feet, light a cigarette, check his pocket watch and glance quickly toward the house. Then I would not be able to contain myself any longer and I would go – a quick check in the mirror; hair and lipstick – and run down the stairs not wasting another moment. It was the same routine, every Wednesday, week upon week, and each time with the excitement of the first…
*
‘You’re late,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t sure you would come.’ Then he smiled. He reached out his hand and touched the violet in my buttonhole, the stalk quivering against my breast.
‘I was expecting the white dress,’ he said.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Grass stains.’
‘You are right,’ he said. ‘You came prepared this time.’
‘No,’ I said quickly. ‘I meant from last time… it’s because I couldn’t possibly wear a dress with grass stains on it. Someone might notice…’ but then I stopped because I was fooling nobody.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said awkwardly, although I don’t think either of us knew what he was apologizing for.
I looked away quickly, feeling the halo of his warmth on my skin. A bus rumbled past, slowing slightly as it passed the war memorial, its windows orange with the glare of the sun. I turned my head quickly, facing the plinth so that I was not recognized by the passengers I imagined.
When the bus had passed, he stooped and kissed me. I felt the warm fleshiness of his lips on my own and the clamminess of his hand as it gently held my cheek. Then he stopped and glanced towards the house and I followed his gaze instinctively, even though I knew all the rooms were empty.
‘Shall we go?’ he said.
I nodded quickly.
He took my hand and we started to walk in silence, side by side, towards the centre of town. He walked quickly and I struggled to keep pace with his long strides. As we reached St Cuthbert’s, the bells started to strike out the hour, the hollow chime following us down the street.
I untangled my fingers from his. ‘Not here!’
I watched our shadows jostling on the pavement, merging into each other and then apart again, and I marvelled at how large he was compared to me. When we reached the edge of the green I saw a lady I knew walking towards us, a forgotten friend from the Missensham Girl Guides, her mother leaning on her arm as she helped her along the pavement. I looked down as they drew closer, sure that somehow this woman also knew Audrey, although I could not think how.
He’s a family friend, I said over and over in my head, rehearsing for the meeting, but the woman did not look up until she was very close, and when she finally saw us I just nodded and smiled and, in the corner of my eye, my family friend did the same.
The green was empty but for a few children petting an excited dog and I thanked God for the heat of the midday sun. Outside the tearoom a couple of waitresses sat on the steps, blowing cigarette smoke into the road. They had been at my school but were some years younger, too young to know me well. They watched us carefully as we got closer, too uncouth to look away, their conversation stalling as we passed. I could feel their eyes following my lover taking in every inch of him. I smiled to myself, walking tall and sticking out my chest, allowing my shoulder to rub on his sleeve and noting with pride that he did not look at the girls, that he kept striding forward.
We crossed the canal bridge and headed away from town. Down the long, straight road that led to the station, the road where the tarmac was bordered by high hedges. I looked up at his face, but his eyes were gazing forward, so I turned to look at the road again only to feel him looking at me and I knew that if I turned my head again I would appear foolish if he didn’t return the glance. A bicycle whizzed past my ear and I jumped away from him, my face reddening. I began to make an awkward apology but he had stopped walking.
‘It was here,’ he said, parting the hedge with his hands.
Through the gap, the field shone with the sun and violets.
I stopped and took a step back, suddenly feeling a weight in my stomach. ‘I—’
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘It’s fine.’
So that was me – Emma Marks, awkward and shy – who entered the field for a second time, and it was me, Emma Marks, who wondered what would happen now there was no alcohol to make her desirable and witty. But it was not Emma Marks who lay down with a stranger in the grass. That was her, and she… well, she was one of those other women: she was Greta Garbo, ten foot tall on the flickering screen, the one who could melt a hundred men with one glance from under those curving eyelashes; she was the model from the cheeky Brighton postcards, the one whose hair cascaded over her proud breasts and whose frozen face laughed at the men who stared and wished; she was the flapper from the Savoy who flaunted her calves and collarbone and blew smoke in the faces of lustful young lords; she was the girl in white who squinted up at the station’s tiled facade, the classical goddess with the catalogue pose.
It was those women in the field that day – those women who writhed in the grass and felt the press of their spine against the hard earth. It was those women who gasped and dug their nails into flesh that pulsed with heat, who felt their bodies heave and shudder.
But it was me, Emma Marks, who lay in the field afterwards, my shoulder nestled into the armpit of a stranger. It was my skirt that was hitched up and my body that sank heavily into the grass. It was my thighs, the swell of my buttocks and the small of my back left wet and warm. It was my eyes that saw the violets in the hedgerow and blurred them into blue. And it was me, Emma Marks, who felt that maybe, just maybe, a little part of all those women had stayed with me too.
Above me the clouds swept across the sky, melting into one another and then fading away into little wisps. Somewhere in the distance the wind caught the rattle of carriages on the railway line.
‘Those people on the train,’ I said, ‘I wonder where they are going.’
He opened his eyes, just a slit, enough to shoot me a glance of blue.
‘Baker Street,’ he said.
I rolled over and punched his arm. ‘Baker Street,’ I said, ‘then a connection to Waterloo and overland to Dover!’
‘The boat train?’ he said.
‘Yes, of course, then a ferry to Calais and then a dirty weekend in Le Touquet. They will bathe in the crystal waters and burn themselves red on the sand.’
‘Oh I see,’ he said. ‘Le Touquet, where Missensham’s bank managers, and secretaries can be mermaids and sea nymphs.’
And somewhere down the line the vibration of the train caught on the metal of the track, the echo faded and distant as if it had come from Le Touquet it
self.
‘I think they are going to Baker Street,’ he said.
I laughed.
‘Maybe one day we can go to Le Touquet,’ I said. ‘Or further… further than this field, somewhere with crystal blue waters.’
‘You’re right,’ he said, smiling. ‘Maybe one day we can go to the lido.’
I lay my arm across his chest. ‘What’s your name?’
He hesitated for just a second and turned his head towards me, those blue eyes looking right at me. ‘Peter,’ he said.
‘Peter? Peter who?’
He covered his face with a huge hand and laughed.
‘Oh come on, you know who I am, my name, my address, yet you get to be mysterious.’
‘Well you can be mysterious too if you like.’ He turned his head again. ‘So then, mystery woman, what’s your name?’
I looked around but the answer was obvious. ‘Violet,’ I said.
‘Violet,’ he repeated slowly and then chuckled to himself. He pulled a violet from the grass and held it close to his chest, his breaths magnified by the rise and fall of his fist. Then he buried his nose in the flower, the petals sucked flat against his nostrils, as if he was drinking the scent.
19
Ruby
My name is Ruby Brown but my brothers have their own names for me – Slap-face, Scabby Queen, Domino Pox, Leper. When they tease me, Maudy squeezes me tight; she says that I am too good for Evesbridge and that one day I can leave and find out who I really am. But she is just comforting me, she doesn’t know that I will make it true sooner than she thinks. You see, I have been collecting treasure and, now that I have found my final piece, I can leave this place. I can be someone else – the grand Missensham lady with the grey mare that Emma said I could be. I won’t have to be Ruby Brown at all.
I found it buried in the yard, just under the mangle. I had wanted the big round stone that covered it but when I took the stone away, I saw the silver glinting at me. The stone was between the legs of the mangle, in the middle – a place easy to remember, as if the treasure had been hidden, not mislaid. But that did not matter because now it was mine.
The treasure was like a silver box, smooth and flat, and as big as a pack of playing cards. When I turned it over, I rubbed mud into the etchings, making the flowers black.
I went into the henhouse and squatted down by Snowflake, reaching under her warm body to the gap in the slats. The rest of my treasure was still there; the four shiny shillings that Emma had never collected. But this new treasure would be my favourite; something I had found that nobody else could know about.
I rubbed the treasure on my sleeve but the wool snagged on a little clasp. The treasure was not solid silver, but hollow, and I fancied that I could keep some chalks inside, and Emma’s shillings. My fingers stumbled over the clasp as I tried to prise the two silver halves apart but then the treasure folded open like a butterfly, a bitter smell rising upwards.
The inside of the treasure was not silver but dull and brown. On one side a photograph of a sleeping baby was tucked inside the rim. The picture was battered, like it had been carried around for a long time but also taken out, handled, and then returned over and over again. The corners were curled at the edges as if the photograph had not quite fitted into its home but the owner could not bring themselves to trim it.
I looked into the baby’s face. It was peaceful but there was something odd about it, something cold. I stared hard until my eyes blurred. And that was when I saw the baby wriggle.
I felt a jolt deep inside me, like the snap of ice breaking on a frozen pond, then the ice spread through my blood and my fingers throbbed where they touched the silver. But, now that I saw the picture properly again, the baby was still. Something was very wrong with this photograph. I did not want it there. I put my fingernail behind the paper and tried to pull it out but it did not come and I pulled and pulled and then suddenly the photograph flicked out onto the floor and the treasure spun out of my hands, purple exploding all around it and fluttering to the floor.
I looked inside the treasure again. The head of a flower had been pressed flat against the metal, the purple blackening as I watched. There were five petals – the top two pointed like rabbit ears, the other three fanning out underneath – a violet. There had been violets in my treasure and now there were violets around my feet, there were violets still fluttering in the air and there were violets stuck to my fingers. This place was mine, my home, and I had brought violets to it. I had brought them indoors. So many violets, so much bad luck. Suddenly death was all around me.
20
Emma
I hardly saw George in the weeks that followed the party. He would leave for work before I woke, then return home briefly in time for supper. He was on call in the evenings, he said, and every evening at seven, he would drive away in the car, despite the telephone never ringing. He would return at nine, just as the light was fading and wash his hands rigorously until they became hard like chicken claws, the smell of carbolic wafting from the bathroom. Then he would sink into his armchair and I would wake from my trance and scurry around fetching his sherry and newspaper.
I was surprised how little I cared about his behaviour. Some months ago I would have longed for him to distract me but now I welcomed the time alone in my thoughts. Now that I had rediscovered my memories of 1925, I was much more content for my mind to fill with idle recollections than thoughts about housework or little worries about George’s funny ways. At least I could console myself with the fact that I had loved and been happy in my life, even if it had been for a short time, and that if I had been Maud I would have spent my years working hard and not have had such treasured memories. If I had been her, I would have spent years tied to one man, a farm hand and a lout, pushing out child after child… four children at least but no, not five, I knew that much.
And then, before I knew it, several weeks had passed in a mist of steam and carbolic and I found myself at the dining room table with George, the Saturday concert crackling from the living room.
We ate supper in silence. The low sun smoked the dining room windows with dull light, bathing the room with a beige sheen. The mutton was cold and flaccid. George’s jaw worked monotonously, his face embalmed in the glow of the evening, a dull egg of light reflecting on his forehead. He had put his spectacles back on, I noticed, after hours spent soaking them in bleach.
He cleared his throat. ‘I saw that the nursery curtains were open.’
‘Yes,’ I said not looking up from my plate. ‘I was in there a few days ago.’
‘Well, good,’ he said. ‘Maybe this would be a good time for us to clear it out. Get rid of some of the old stuff so that Mr Tuttle can go in.’
I kept quiet, knowing a response either way would not make a difference.
‘I’m sure Mr Tuttle understands these things,’ George continued. ‘I’ve seen him laying flowers at the memorial many a time. He has had his share of losses too, no doubt.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Well?’
‘Maybe.’
A posy of violets sat in the middle of the dining table, their stems furred by the yellowed water in George’s sherry glass. I stared at them, wondering where they could have come from. Perhaps George had seen that the ones left after the garden party had finally wilted, and gone to the trouble of replacing them with a fresh bunch – why would he do that? How unlike him!
George positioned his knife carefully on the side of his plate. ‘I saw the rocking horse yesterday,’ he said casually.
‘What?’
‘The one that you gave to that tinker family.’
‘I know which one!’ I said.
He wiped his mouth slowly, his lips unfurling from the edge of his napkin. I waited for him to fold it carefully on to his lap, the way he always did, one of the little rituals he went through before he was about to say anything important. ‘I was on call,’ he said at last. ‘I got sent out to a farm worker’s cottage over by Evesbridge. The
patient had what looks like tuberculosis, I had to do the tests – tuberculin and so forth.’
‘TB?’ I said. ‘And so near Missensham!’
‘I wouldn’t worry yourself,’ George said. ‘There is little chance of it spreading to the Sunningdale Estate. No, this case is most likely isolated and due to the ways of the family – quite unsanitary. These deaths by the thousand that the newspapers like to scare us with are mainly confined to urban areas and the poorer populations. As long as you don’t catch a chill or associate too much with these people, you will be quite—’
‘Was the patient a little girl?’ I said quickly.
‘A girl?’ George shook his head impatiently. ‘No, no – she was a woman, middle-aged, a scrawny-looking thing. I just thought that, as you gave the family the horse, you might know of her.’
‘Maud?’ I said.
‘I wouldn’t know. Brown I think the family name was.’
‘Yes, Maud Brown,’ I said, but he continued, as if not interested in my connection.
The Liar Page 12
