First Friends

by Marcia Willett

  ‘No,’ Cass was crying, as if pleading with somebody. ‘No.’

  She fumbled with her door handle, almost falling into the road, before she started to run towards the tangled vehicles. Charlotte followed her, begging her to stop.

  ‘Go and get help!’ Cass turned on her, her face crumpled with horror and fury. ‘You see what you’ve done! Now go on into the village and get help. Go into Mrs Drew’s. Tell her to phone for an ambulance!’

  They reached the cars together and Cass gasped at the dreadful sight. Charlotte, choking with sobs, and with one appalled glance at the carnage in the car, stumbled on in the direction of the village. As she did so the storm broke above her head and the rain poured down.

  CASS REPLACED THE TELEPHONE receiver and stood for a moment, leaning heavily against the hall table.

  ‘How are they?’

  She turned to look at Kate whom she had telephoned earlier, telling her the dreadful news and asking if she would come and keep her company. Cass gestured futilely.

  ‘I suppose it could be worse.’ She made it sound as if she couldn’t imagine how. ‘Philip was killed more or less outright.’ A spasm of horror crossed her face. It would be a long time before she could forget that scene: Philip dying, with his maimed and bloody head pressed against his unborn child—if it were his child . . . Not that it mattered any more. ‘Jane’s suffering from shock. She’s lost the baby but they think she’ll recover. Alan’s side of the car took the impact. He tried to swerve away when he saw the van heading for them. They think he’ll lose a leg. Oh, Kate.’ Her eyes swam with tears.

  Kate took her arm and led her into the drawing room, pushing her down gently into an armchair. Presently she returned with a glass containing gin and tonic.

  ‘Here,’ she said. ‘This might help.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Cass looked wan. ‘I could do with a drink. Heavens!’ she grimaced as she sipped it. ‘That’s a strong one.’

  ‘Cass.’ Kate perched on the edge of another chair. ‘D’you know where Charlotte is?’

  ‘No.’ Cass shook her head. ‘I assumed she was upstairs. I haven’t seen her since I sent her off to raise the alarm but I must talk to her. Nobody need know why Philip Raikes rammed the Maxwells’ car. There’s no reason why it shouldn’t have been a perfectly ordinary accident. I told the police that he’d been to turn on the central heating and we happened to be following him back. His van seemed to go out of control as he turned on to the road. It was a very old van so I’m hoping that they’ll assume something broke or snapped or something. Only Jane and I and Mrs Hampton know anything about the other thing. And Charlotte, of course. That’s why I must speak to her. I don’t want her blabbing it all out and the police are bound to want a statement from her.’

  ‘Well, she’s not upstairs. Gemma’s in bed asleep but Charlotte’s nowhere around. D’you think she’s OK?’

  ‘I haven’t the least idea!’ Cass took another sip, looking more like her old self. ‘She’s probably with Hammy. I’d better phone and check. I wish Tom was here.’ She was suddenly aware of how deeply she needed him. Tom was good in a crisis. All his service training came to the fore. He was calm, efficient, completely in charge. ‘Why can’t they ever be around when you need them? What’s the time?’

  ‘It’s after ten. That’s why I’m so worried about Charlotte. D’you think . . . ?’

  The phone began to ring.

  ‘Oh, hell,’ said Cass wearily. ‘What now?’

  ‘I’ll get it.’ Kate went out and Cass heard her answering. She was too exhausted to try to hear the words. She rested her head on the back of the chair and shut her eyes.

  ‘Cass. It’s Mrs Ankerton.’ Cass opened her eyes and stared up at Kate. ‘She says that Charlotte took her horse out earlier and it’s just come back without her. She said that she had no idea that Charlotte had been there or she wouldn’t have let her go in this weather. She’s terribly upset about it. She can’t think what can have happened to her.’

  ‘I AM THE RESURRECTION and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.’

  Cass and Tom walked behind Charlotte’s coffin, following it into the old granite church. None of their other children was at the funeral. While she was waiting for Tom to come home, Cass and Kate had driven to Blundells.

  ‘There’s no question of Oliver coming to the funeral,’ Cass had said when Kate had suggested that he would be devastated at the news. ‘I talked to his Housemaster about it and he agreed that it would be cruel. Oliver would have to go straight back to school and how would he feel, lying awake in the dormitory remembering . . . imagining . . . ’ Her lips shook and she swallowed hard, gripping the wheel as if it were a lifeline.

  Kate, who had let her drive knowing that it was better for her to have something to concentrate on, looked away from Cass’s grief-ravaged face and stared out of the window recalling Giles’s horror when she had telephoned him to warn him that they were coming and why.

  ‘I feel the same about Saul,’ Cass was saying. ‘He’s too little. It won’t seem quite so real if he doesn’t come to the funeral.’

  When they arrived at Blundells, Oliver was already in the twins’ study. Gently, carefully, Cass told him that Charlotte had been thrown from her horse and had been killed outright. She had not been wearing her hard hat. Oliver was shocked and silent. Hugging him tightly, she explained to him that it would be better for him to stay at school and that Giles and Guy would be there if he needed them. He could telephone her at any time and if he really felt that he must come home he would be allowed to. When she had gone, Giles put his arms round Oliver and held him while he cried.

  Afterwards she drove to Mount House to see Saul. Alone with him in the headmaster’s study, she told him that Charlotte had died in a riding accident. He watched her, not knowing how to react or what was expected of him. Somehow he couldn’t take it in and, as Cass had guessed, it didn’t seem real to him. She had hugged him and told him that he must be brave but that he could go to Matron or one of the masters if he felt he couldn’t cope. It was better, she said, for him to go on as usual and not to dwell on it. He would be home very soon for half-term anyway. When she had gone everyone was very nice to him and great care was taken that there should always be someone at hand, ready to offer comfort.

  Gemma was staying with Sophie. She was hardly old enough to understand it all and Abby kept her occupied, giving the two little girls treats and outings.

  Harriet, hearing of the tragedy through Kate, sent flowers, feeling that it would be tactless to be there in person. She felt a terrible sense of guilt. Had Charlotte known of her affair with Tom and been affected by it? The girl had always been very fond of her father. Had Tom been with her, Harriet, when he should have been with his family?

  ‘Deliver me from all mine offences . . . ’ Hugh Ankerton stood at the very back of the church, not wishing to be seen. His mother and father, Lucinda, all of them had been loud in their protestations that it was nothing to do with him. But he knew differently. He knew that the story was that Charlotte, already in a nervous state, had been overset by the sight of a dreadful accident and had gone out on her horse in a terrible storm, up near the quarry where the fences were still down. She had been thrown and her body had been found in the water at the bottom of the quarry. Ah! But why had she been in that earlier nervous state? And why had she ridden up on that slippery, dangerous path, knowing as she did—for had not Hugh himself warned her?—what a risk she was taking, especially in a storm? If only I’d told her about Lucinda, he thought, instead of letting her find out like that. If only I’d written to her afterwards. Hugh bowed his head, swallowing his tears.

  ‘Hear my prayer, O Lord . . . ’ Mrs Hampton stood with Kate and mourned privately. If only she’d been there on that Monday as usual, Charlotte might not have gone running to the cottage with the message and none of it would have happened. She saw in her
mind’s eye the child’s bedroom: the Peter Rabbit quilt, the soft toys ranged in chairs and on the window seat, and Charlotte’s collection of china animals and much-loved books. She thought of her as a baby and as a little girl, thumb in mouth, head bent intently over a book: she remembered teaching her to cook, the barbecues that she had loved so much and the day she had been made Head-girl. Hot tears scorched her wrinkled cheeks.

  ‘Thou hast set our misdeeds before thee: and our secret sins in the light of our countenance . . . ’ Tom knelt, stood, sat mechanically, staring straight ahead, his throat aching with unshed tears and trying to prevent his imagination from showing him, in dreadful clarity, Charlotte’s broken body lying in the muddy water at the bottom of the quarry. She had been his favourite child, not least because she had loved him so much. Even as a baby . . . He jerked his mind away from Charlotte as a baby. He had hardly seen her during his last leave. He’d been too busy pursuing Harriet to give any time to her. He knew that Charlotte had wanted to talk to him but, dreading another Education Debate, he’d avoided her, putting her off. Had she perhaps hated school so much that . . . ? He wrenched his mind away from that thought. What a selfish fool he’d been. Supposing he’d lost everything? Cass was so remote, so withdrawn. If only she would give him some small sign that she still cared, that their life together was not shattered forever.

  ‘Comfort us again now . . . ’ Kate stared at Cass’s back, knowing how she suffered, guessing her thoughts. She had heard them over and over in the last few days and had done her utmost to comfort her but Cass was beyond comfort. Although she could not be held responsible for the accident, she knew very well that Charlotte had suspected that she might be meeting a man. And the whole trouble was that her suspicions were grounded in fact. If she had been a different woman, Charlotte would not have come to the cottage that afternoon. A good mother would have checked out the trip to Bristol more thoroughly. She would have been at home when Charlotte returned in her distraught state, not in the arms of a lover in the Shropshire hills. Her concern for Charlotte in this past week had been quite eclipsed by her own despair about Nick.

  ‘I’m not fit to be a mother,’ she cried at one point and Kate had put her arms about her and held her as she sobbed. ‘You always warned me that one day I’d get the bullet. But why did Charlotte have to suffer? It wasn’t her fault.’

  ‘For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive . . . ’ Cass gazed up at the east window where Mary held the Infant Jesus on her lap. She saw the pride and tenderness in the painted face and the smooth limbs of the Child. It made her think of Charlotte as a baby and she remembered her own pride and Tom’s joy in his new daughter. The pain clawed at her heart but she continued to gaze, her eyes staring against the tears that threatened: anything rather than let her eyes rest on Charlotte’s coffin standing before the altar. It didn’t bear thinking about: not the dank earth and the worms and the darkness . . .

  ‘Behold, I shew you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed . . . ’

  She tried to pray but her thoughts scurried hither and thither and she was unable to form even one coherent idea. Tom stood beside her as distant as another planet: withdrawn, silent, locked in his own mystery. She had not been the one to break the news to him. He had been at sea and the Navy had done it for her. By the time he had got home it was as if his emotions were lying beneath a thin coating of ice and they had behaved like strangers to each other: polite, kindly, gentle, as though they were viewing each other through a thin plastic membrane. Each longed to break through, to seek comfort from the other but were prevented by their secret guilt. Their passions and desires seemed to have been expunged as if they had never been: such pointless, shameful schemings they seemed now that pay day had come round and they had to meet the bill.

  ‘Oh death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory . . . ?’

  The coffin was being carried out now. Tom stood aside for Cass and as she passed into the aisle her eyes met Kate’s. She understood the unspoken request and moved to walk beside Cass, their hands meeting for a moment, holding, pressing in a shared love. They emerged into the churchyard which was swept and buffeted by a boisterous autumn gale, the tall trees bowing before the wind that swept clean and pure, down from the moor. As they reached the open grave where Charlotte would lie, only a few feet from her grandfather, Kate, unable to bear the anguish in Cass’s face, looked away for a moment, up at the clouds that bellied and raced like huge spinnakers, white and golden before the wind.

  ‘Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live and is full of misery . . . ’

  KATE AND CASS EMBRACED wordlessly and Cass watched as Kate went down the front steps and climbed into the car where Hammy observed them compassionately from the passenger’s seat. As the sound of the engine died away, Cass turned back into the house and shut the door behind her. How different was a wake for a child from one for an old person. The usual trite cliches—‘he’d had a good innings,’ ‘it was a merciful release’—simply didn’t apply. It had been an agonising afternoon with everyone aware of the fragility of human life and its transitory nature.

  Cass began to wonder where Tom was. They had hardly spoken to each other all afternoon and when they had it had been in that brittle way in which they had communicated for the last few days. Cass checked the study and the kitchen and wearily climbed the stairs, almost hauling herself up by the banister. Having gained the landing, she turned towards her bedroom, taking the pins out of her hair as she did so. Her head was splitting and she could hardly see. A noise, muffled, distinct, caused her to pause. She listened, aware of the wind still howling and roaring round the house.

  There it was again and it was coming from Charlotte’s room. Her heart gave a flutter of fear and she pressed her hands against her breast. Suddenly she crossed the few feet of carpet and gently pushed open the bedroom door.

  Tom stood by the window, his head bowed. In his hands he held Charlotte’s teddy bear, Winnie-the-Pooh, made by Hammy years before, his corduroy worn thin and rubbed from huggings. Cass heard the sound again, a painful, tearing whimper of pain and her heart contracted with love. The shell that had been forming over her emotions cracked and fell away in the face of Tom’s anguish and in the knowledge of his pain and her love for him.

  ‘Tom!’ she cried sharply and then, more gently, ‘Tom.’

  He turned to her, his eyes swollen and streaming, his mouth stretched in an ugly soundless cry, and she opened her arms to him. The generosity of her gesture and her expression told him that all could be forgiven between them and that their grief could be shared. He stumbled towards her, still holding the bear, and she gathered him tightly to her breast.

  ‘Darling,’ she murmured. ‘Oh, darling.’

  She held him as he mourned, gazing beyond him at the square church tower, dark against the bright turbulent sky and, quite suddenly, it were as if she saw her father standing before her. He was young again, upright, smiling, and in his arms he held a child. He smoothed its hair and touched its cheek and she seemed to hear him speak. The voice was his but the words—words that he had used so often—were the words of Dame Julian of Norwich.

  ‘ . . . and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.’