THE HOURS BEFORE: A Story of Mystery and Suspense from the Belle Époque

by Robert Stephen Parry

  ‘What?’ Deborah hears herself demand, and in a voice which doesn’t quite seem to belong to her.

  ‘Flowers, ma'am. Flowers for celebration and remembrance, flowers for …’

  ‘The devil take your flowers. She’s not dead, I tell you!’ Deborah screams and, advancing on the young woman, discovers then that she has somehow collided with her - and, clearly not conscious of her own strength, has managed to topple her over. The entire tray goes skywards as she falls, scattering the pretty bouquets everywhere upon the ground. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. I’m so very sorry,’ Deborah whimpers, offering to help her up from the harsh gravel walkway, but the girl cowers from her and scrambles to her feet unaided, a look of fear upon her face as she turns to behold her assailant.

  ‘Please … listen to me: I’m so sorry,’ Deborah repeats.

  But the poor girl, endeavouring to disengage herself from Deborah’s touch, and flinching in the proximity of the vast brim of her hat, only reacts to this by breaking into tears, great loud sobs. People are staring, mesmerised by the ugly scene she is creating - so she turns away, abandons the girl and hurries off, her steps quickening all the while and wondering how on earth she could have done such a thing? But there again, she is feeling most strange. So strange, in fact, she realises she almost certainly needs another drink - and so she pops quickly into the Carlton for a brandy prior to taking a cab across town to Fleet Street. It is all a bit of a haze, the journey - but it only takes around fifteen minutes, and in no time she finds herself in the foyer of Peters Associated Publishing where her ex-husband’s newspaper, the News Chronicle, is also housed. Being a familiar face, at least to the old gentleman on duty behind the desk today, she meets with hardly any surprise or resistance upon her arrival, and soon, already emerging from the lift to the top floor she almost straight away encounters her husband’s typist and secretary, her friend and ally, Rachael, looking very fetching and business-like in her high lace collar and puffed sleeves. Thank heaven. But to her astonishment, Rachael, her face etched with tiny lines of concern, tries to dissuade her from entering.

  ‘Debbie, sweetie - Hugh is at a meeting, you can’t ...’

  ‘Nonsense!’ Deborah declares and brushes her friend aside - robustly, as it happens, feeling certain there would be no such meeting at this time of the afternoon. And, indeed, as she thrusts apart the double doors to his office suite, her judgement is confirmed. There he is, alone - in shirtsleeves and braces, seated at his desk - that vast mahogany desk of his from which, with a swivel of his chair, he might gaze out over the skyline of London as if from the heavens themselves. But just at this moment he is staring at her, and clearly startled by her arrival.

  ‘What the hell …?’ he begins.

  ‘Oh, hello my love,’ she hears herself say in a voice that sounds like a bark and, again, not at all like it should normally sound.

  Her husband, meanwhile, has leapt to his feet, the sweat on his forehead making the margins of his black hair even more sleek and glossy than ever; his long, skeletal fingers already pressing furiously at a rank of buttons on his desk that will summon people to his aid. ‘Rachael, how the hell did this mad bitch get in here?’ he demands of the other woman, who is in fact wringing her hands in some consternation at the doorway behind.

  ‘How dare you take away my home!’ Deborah yells, pursuing her husband around the desk in her rage.

  ‘Your home?’ he responds, gaining composure all the while, yet still backtracking from her as she advances. ‘Did you say your home? Oh I don’t think that claim is entirely accurate, Deborah, not if you’re referring to Craigmull or the cottage - not any longer.’ At which, seeing Deborah halted by the obstruction of a chair between them, he folds his arms smugly across his chest. ‘Our accountants, in fact, are entirely clear about the ownership of those properties. The shareholders of Peters Associated Publishing own them. And it remains my responsibility to realise our assets.’

  ‘Your assets be damned!’ Deborah cries, dashing the chair aside and feeling the urge to dig in her nails and to tear flesh.

  But just then the doors that Rachael has so quietly closed behind her swing open violently again and two men in uniform burst through, security officers from downstairs - neither of whom have succeeded in preventing Deborah’s intrusion in the first place, and so they look embarrassed as well as angry.

  ‘Wait outside!’ Peters bellows, and they do - exiting as rapidly as they had come in. ‘No - not you, Rachael,’ Peters calls after his typist, his voice more subdued.

  To which Rachael, dithering already half way inside the door, and looking as if she would have preferred to accompany the men to safety, obediently slides back in. She is looking unusually sheepish, Deborah thinks, not at all like the Rachael she is familiar with - though she does feel glad to have her in the room, and hopes she has not frightened her or hurt her in her initial enthusiasm upon entering, because the poor woman is rubbing her arm as if in pain.

  ‘No, that’s right, don’t go Rachael,’ Hugh repeats with an abrupt and surprising tenderness. ‘Come here please. After all, I think it’s only fair Deborah meets the future Mrs Peters, don’t you?’

  Scarcely able to believe what she is hearing, Deborah can only turn to stare in open-mouthed amazement at her friend, as Hugh saunters slowly towards her and takes Rachael by the hand, rather forcefully, and draws her to his side in a gesture of victory - her closest friend, her ally: the sleek, ever-tidy, ever-sophisticated and now, it would seem, utterly treacherous Rachael in his arms. Her eyes with their long dark lashes are cast down, no doubt feeling ashamed - as well she might, the mystery of her reticence in responding to any of Deborah’s letters or messages of late fully explained now, painfully so.

  ‘Once all these tedious details with the properties are settled - and that shouldn’t take long now,’ Hugh announces, perching himself on the edge of his desk, ‘Rachael and I will tie the knot. A ceremony at Craigmull, in fact, your former home.’

  It takes Deborah a while until she can respond - the words simply will not come out. ‘How very nice for you both,’ she eventually murmurs as she slumps down into the long couch close to the door, feeling suddenly so tired - as Rachael, already becoming more brazen and gaining in confidence, leans closer against her lover’s side, surveying her vanquished predecessor with merely a mild curiosity now she is seated and exhausted of her venom. And as she meets her eyes, it seems to Deborah she is not ashamed at all, but more relieved than anything else that everything is out in the open. She no longer has to pretend; no longer has to lie.

  ‘It’s not like you think, Debbie,’ she finally murmurs with hesitation, still rubbing her sore arm and perhaps wondering if she dare say anything at all. ‘It was only after the divorce. Only after he became available that we …’

  ‘Oh, really?’ Deborah interrupts, taking her handkerchief and twisting it between her hands in a gesture of distaste. ‘Well … that’s all right then, isn’t it,’ she remarks, feigning indifference and with an irony wasted on her former friend.

  ‘By the way Deborah, I understand you failed to deliver that manuscript, the other day,’ Peters reminds her, intervening abruptly to change the subject, and speaking with an altogether bewildering nonchalance considering the gravity of the situation as he releases Rachael from his grasp and retakes his seat. ‘You remember, I’m sure - that pamphlet of yours; that measly collection of pages you call a book, and due over a month ago at the publishers in New York. Remember?’

  At which, more settled in his mastery of the situation, he leans back in his chair, interlaces his fingers and smiles, while Rachael, for her part, continues to dither, looking less confident once again now he has disengaged himself from her arm.

  ‘Well - so what!’ Deborah snaps back at her foe, pleased that this, her recent negligence has at least caused a minor inconvenience to the company and its various subsidiaries. ‘I don’t care. In fact I’m glad.’

  ‘Now, now, Deborah - steady on,’ Hugh warns
her, pointing a finger, and with a most unbecoming sneer spreading across his face. ‘Remember what they say: when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. May I remind you, that you are already way in breach of contract, having put your arts column in jeopardy by failing to review on several recent plays and exhibitions. In fact, it could well be that your services will no longer be required at the Sunday Chronicle precisely because of this.’

  ‘Too bad - you’ll just have to find some other drudge,’ she snaps back at him. ‘The pay is derisory, anyway.’

  ‘Oh, do not concern yourself over that, Deborah. There will be no need to replace you. Your sort of garbage is not anything we will be handling any longer at P.A.P - not here in the UK or across the Pond. My firm deals with reality these days, hard news and facts, not with all your kind of tittle-tattle. Oh, and by the way: the company will most likely be suing you, as well. Just thought I would warn you of this in advance. Something in the thousands, probably if you wish to settle out of court. Though I can’t imagine, to be frank, where you are going to find that kind of money. Oh and don’t think you’ll be able to pay it off with any of your antiques or paintings at Craigmull. They’ve already gone under the hammer - last week.’

  ‘You’ve been up there? When?’ she demands.

  ‘Oh, not me: the auctioneers, my dear,’ Hugh replies, the unbecoming grin that has been a fixture on his face for the past several minutes broadening all the while. ‘Rachael here popped up to show them around a few weeks ago. So I wouldn’t recommend you trying to salvage anything. The locks are all changed, including the main gates. All the staff have strict orders to prohibit your entrance.’

  ‘But the paintings - the Gainsboroughs, the Rossettis - they’re mine,’ Deborah challenges him, but her voice is faltering - as a shake of the head from her former husband confirms the horrid truth: that all of the artworks were either once purchased through the company or are in fact owned by her husband, anyway. The same formula, he explains, applies to all the furniture and antiques at the cottage in Hampshire, too - all tied in with the P.A.P Conference Centre or Study Foundation or any other number of clever tax write-offs that the company accountants foster with such diligence. Even the carpets she once bought with such care, the Waterford crystal, the Meissen porcelain, even her gowns and jewellery for entertaining - everything gone under the hammer - until, to her surprise, she is forced to acknowledge that she probably has nothing much more left to her name other than a leasehold apartment in Knightsbridge and the clothes she stands up in.

  ‘Why are you doing this to me?’ she pleads, her words dropping into a cavernous silence she knows no one really needs to respond to, not least Hugh. And feeling tearful and so angry at her own frailty, she takes the handkerchief to her streaming eyes. ‘Why ..?’

  ‘Why?’ he repeats, if anything even more assertive now and getting to his feet again as if he would leap up and devour her. ‘Because of that grave - the grave over at Highgate. Because of the child that lies buried there. Our daughter - my dearest Penny. That’s why!’

  ‘You blame me?’

  ‘My God! You could not be more culpable than if you had put her there with your own hands. All her life long - your spooks and fairy tales. What chance did Penny have with a mother like you!’

  ‘Don’t call her Penny - that awful name,’ Deborah whines, most distraught, her head spinning as she clutches her hands to her temples. How she hates it, that detestable name he always insisted on calling her - naming their child after a unit of currency. ‘Our daughter’s name is Penelope!’ she screams. ‘My beautiful Poppy.’

  ‘Poppy!’ he retorts, with a sideways look of embarrassment towards Rachael, as if he suspects he might be sounding increasingly petty in his squabble. ‘Oh yes, that was always your preference, wasn’t it - Poppy - a bloody flower! You’re stuck in the past, you are. Life isn’t like that, Deborah - like some poetic idyll. The poor kid. She never wanted anything to do with all your weird stuff. She always hated fairy stories.’

  ‘Yes, thanks to you!’ Deborah retorts, drawing herself up from her seat now, and no longer feeling quite so depleted of energy. ‘Perhaps that’s why I felt she needed them most of all.’

  ‘Don’t talk rubbish!’ he cries - the whole conversation by this stage having descended into some awful matrimonial shouting match. ‘You just wanted to shape her in your own grotesque image - turn her into the great diva you never became yourself. She could have been brilliant, our daughter - intelligent, clever. And you turned her into a degenerate.’

  ‘Shut up!’ Deborah screams, advancing on him once again, losing control.

  But he only laughs now, seeing her close up and yet so defeated, so helpless, her tear-stained face streaked with some kind of obnoxious paint she puts round her eyes and which he has always detested. He grasps her wrists, squeezing painfully for one awful moment to keep her at arms length before releasing her with a vicious shake.

  ‘You’re finished, Deborah. You know that, don’t you?’ he states coldly. And she feels the strength in her legs giving way, almost stumbling on her heels. ‘You will never get anything in print again - never. And those swanky dinner parties at fifty guineas a shot? There’ll be no more of those, either - not after your little performance the other night at the Savoy. Oh yes, that’s right, it’s all over town - the way you made a fool of yourself, throwing a tantrum and running out like that. As a matter of fact, we’re going to do a big feature on it in the Sunday Chronicle, this weekend. We have none other than Bob Small on the case - and you know what that means. Watch this space, Deborah - because he’ll be dealing very thoroughly, I understand, in his own inimitable way with what’s left of your reputation. In fact, our editor assures me he already has very large bucket of filth sitting on his desk right now, courtesy of Bob Small. And in a few days time he’s going to pour the whole lot all over you.’

  Deborah feels slightly delirious, her head pounding. ‘I don’t care - I don’t need you. I don’t need any of you!’ she screams in fury as she turns from them both, from all their hatred and treachery. Storming out the office, ignoring the security men in the corridor, she kicks the sides of the elevator upon entering to make as much noise as possible until she reaches the ground floor where, with futile indignation, she swings her handbag at the plate glass of the revolving doors as she leaves.

  She has rarely if ever felt so distressed, so desperate - suspecting, also, that she is behaving most oddly again, muttering to herself, cursing under her breath as she hurries along the street. People are staring at her. Bystanders, in alarm, step out of the way as she advances. Sometimes, others shout after her because she has collided with them. That can’t be right, she thinks. So to steady herself, she pops into the saloon bar of a pub and orders a brandy, indifferent to the puzzled faces of the other customers, for it is unusual, she knows, for one dressed as finely as she to be seated alone in such a place - but she is not bothered. She even picks up a small bottle of port nearby at the off-licence and sequesters it in her coat pocket - a little something for later, perhaps.

  Oh, how she hates the man. Whatever could she have ever seen in him, to have married such a fiend? And with the revelation of his affair with Rachael and the awful feeling of betrayal clawing at her insides, all of her surroundings start to appear red to Deborah, literally red, in colour and in essence. In an all-consuming haze of redness, she walks in the middle of the street until a cab is forced to draw up for her, a hansom, and from which she orders the driver above to ride out to Highgate cemetery. It’s not a short journey, not by any means, and there is ample time, therefore, to sample the port, straight from the bottle in the privacy of the vehicle. How good it feels, the warm, oak-flavoured liquid at the back of her throat, burning slightly with its stored up heat - matching her mood perfectly. Along the leafy lane the cabman takes her, the rickety two-wheeled vehicle drawn by its solitary horse making good time. Upon arrival at the cemetery she pays the man quickly, not waiting for any change or receipt and,
leaping down, hurries through the still-open gates.

  It is becoming dark, the early, smoky darkness of a November afternoon, and she anticipates being quite alone in the sprawling avenues of granite crosses, statues and mausoleums. As the temperature begins to fall, and with only a halo or two of gaslight nearby, the fog begins to settle around the tombstones, weaving beneath the branches of the yews and across the dank earth. But the shortage of light is no discouragement to her. She needs to get to that grave, and is confident of being able to distinguish it. Yes, there it is, looming out of the darkness, that hideous, stark-white marble slab, without even a smudge of moss or lichen having yet graced its cold, pristine surface: so much at variance with everything else around it - with not a cross, not an angel, not even a place for flowers - Hugh’s conception from start to finish in all its crass modernity, and not a single suggestion of her own having been adopted. She has not returned here since the funeral, so vile and loathsome a place has it already become to her. Why it was even vile and loathsome on the day itself, she recalls. But here again this evening, staring down at it in all its ugly mendaciousness, it looks so much worse.

  Perhaps it is all the accumulated agonies of the past weeks, but something inside her seems to snap then. She begins kicking at the headstone. She hears the heel of her shoe crack before it falls away - but she keeps on kicking - again and again. ‘It’s actually a lot easier to kick without a heel,’ she thinks in one strange moment of lucidity, and finding herself wondering just how many kicks might it take to topple a headstone? How deep in the ground do they bury the damn things, anyway? So strong - so immovable. And so she tries hammering upon the slab with her fists as well. The injuries she is inflicting on herself - for they are injuries, she knows - are worsening. She notices tiny trickles of blood running down her hands, visible even through her kid gloves, all in shreds by now - her sleeves bloody, too, just like her thoughts. She knows she is hysterical, but really: why should she care? It’s not Poppy there beneath the stone. It’s an impostor.