by Susan Moody
But he is right. What does it matter, as long as the two of us are innocent?
‘It wasn’t me, either,’ I say, laughing.
‘No, I don’t believe it was.’
I am outraged. ‘What? You can’t possibly have thought that I . . .’ But I can see that he has at least considered it.
‘You had the motive – given how slight the motives for any of your suspects seem to have been – you had the means, you had the opportunity. What more do you want?’
‘The mindset? Can you honestly see me as a murderer?’
‘As easily, my darling, as you seem to have seen me.’
‘I did not.’
‘If you say so.’
I am embarrassed. ‘I really don’t know what to say.’
‘Then say nothing.’ He gets up and opens the piano lid. ‘This is a nice instrument.’ He pats the stool. ‘Come over here and we’ll sing together like we used to.’ The opening bars of Drink To Me Only spill across the room like sprayed water.
We sing the Ash Grove, and Greensleeves, Early One Morning. Songs of childhood and innocence.
There are tears in my eyes for this beautiful night, my lost past, my beloved unattainable companion. ‘Oh, Orlando,’ I whisper, ‘I love you so.’
He puts his arm round my shoulders. ‘And I you.’
‘I wish . . . oh, how I wish . . .’
‘Hush.’
He doesn’t know that what I wish is that I could be truly free of my suspicions about him. Despite all his explanations, I am still haunted by possibilities.
He leaves the following morning to stay with a college friend in Canterbury, an organist at the cathedral, and won’t be back until the day after tomorrow, the day of Vi Sheffield’s party, my birthday.
Is it due to Orlando’s calming influence that although I am no further forward to laying my ghosts, I nonetheless feel that I am at last turned towards the future? Too restless to work, I lug out from the cupboards in the back room the three boxes of Aunt’s books which Fiona has passed on to me. Many of them are religious tomes of one kind or another and I put them to one side, to be passed on to one of the schools or libraries. At the bottom of each box is a layer of Aunt’s green-bound log books and I toss them into a carton to be put out for the rubbish men at the end of the week. And suddenly I hear again her elderly, but still brisk and incisive voice, ‘You never know when they’ll come in handy.’
I search through the volumes for the one I’m interested in. They’re meticulously annotated in old-fashioned copperplate script so minuscule that they are almost unreadable without a magnifying glass, like the tiny books that the Brontë sisters produced. Each volume begins on January the first and ends on December the thirty-first.
I scuttle through the books, looking for the year I want, the month and day. The entries vary in length, some just a line, others, such as the Coronation, taking up several pages. Most entries were shorter in the earlier journals, gradually increasing as – I suppose – Aunt found herself with more time on her hands.
Feb 24th 1948: I read. Communist party takes control in Czechoslovakia. Vile sausages for supper.
Sept 4th 1949: 09:28 Queen Wilhelmina of Netherlands abdicates for health reasons – how very sensible of her.
It’s not quite Got-up-brushed-my-teeth territory, but pretty close. I choose another volume, and another.
April 27th 1950: 07:03 news on the wireless that South Africa has passed the Group Areas Act. Apartheid, in other words. A sorry day for Africa. 18:53 Ava Carlton leaves the house, a car is waiting for her further down the road. Is romance blooming for our Good Woman? 19:32 Callum & Dougal out for the evening with their bikes. Too much Brylcreem, they look like spivs.
April 1st 1951 April Fool’s Day. 09:46 tell Fiona that Winston Churchill will be arriving for lunch. She is not amused! 22:16 Prunella V returns from an evening out. Needs to lose weight. Wonder where she’s been, who with. Yelland back at 23:47 drunk again. An unpleasant man. Does Fiona know what he gets up to? Is it my duty to tell her?
July 3rd 1952: Bobby slamming doors all morning. What a disagreeable child he is. At 12:32 he runs down the drive, screaming, kicks the gate until one of the panels splinters. Fiona should control him better. Buffy Markham arriving 13:30 tomorrow for lunch.
I eventually find the volume for 1953 and turn to the summer months.
June 19th Ethel & Julius Rosenberg hanged for espionage in Sing Sing, on the flimsiest of evidence, most of it false. A thoroughly disgraceful episode.
But June is much too early. On to July, the pages flipping under my impatient fingers.
July 15th 1953: John Reginald Halliday Christie hanged, a good thing too, a monster for all he looks so meek and mild. Feel sorry for the lodger, Timothy Evans, a miscarriage of justice there, I’m convinced. 16:42 Orlando and Alice home from school for the holidays. They are very civilized children. Ava Carlton’s girl is nicely behaved, too, which is more than can be said for Bobby. Callum off to France for a month to work in a vineyard, Dougal to Scotland, working as an orderly in an Edinburgh hospital, staying with his grandparents, poor boy. The Yelland man is up to his old tricks. The Canon would have been outraged, were he here today. I suppose I should be grateful that at least life is not boring.
July 16th 1953: 09:26 Fiona’s friend Catherine Vinson arrives from Oxford for a short visit. The man with the dog sat on a bench for four hours today, doing absolutely nothing. The children played on the beach all day. Is he watching them? Is he a pervert? Should I report him? There is a great crowd of them, but they are not rowdy. The tallest one, Dickie Tavistock’s boy, has a golf club: presumably he is taking up the game. I wonder if he’ll be as good as his father used to be, before the war. Am feeling a little under the weather.
July 18th 1953: 10:04 Fiona comes in for coffee, brings me a magazine containing her latest story. I often wonder how a woman such as she, with a good degree from Oxford, can write such sentimental claptrap. Still, as she says, it pays some of the bills. 16:07 Children to tea and a game of bezique. Orlando is going to play chess tomorrow with Colonel Strafford-Jones. Alice has started music lessons. 1,700 people have died in floods in Japan.
July 19th 1953: 09:10, Made green tomato chutney. 12:49 Walked to the newsagent. 12:51 Met man with the dog again. Fell into conversation: he is not a local. Nice dog.
July 27th 1953: end of Korean War, thank God for that. How many more wars must there be? 18:30 Orlando brings up supper, Shepherds Pie which is perfectly awful. Poor Fiona is not a good cook, nor, I fear, a hygienic one. Tomorrow I leave for a week in London with the Allinghams. Alice has had her pretty hair cut off.
August 2nd 1953: Children on the beach all day. With the good weather, they’re so sunburned you’d think we were back in the Congo. Alice’s little friend with the red hair seems to be a trifle wayward, heard her arguing with Orlando this morning, using astonishing language. I’m glad to say that O. is too nicely brought up to respond in kind.
August 5th 1953: 07:00 up and out for a short walk before breakfast. Weather superb. Wish the Canon were still alive. On second thoughts perhaps not, he would be shocked by much of the world today. 14:40 The red-haired girl threw a stone at Bobby and hit his shoulder, making him cry. Nobody noticed except me, and Orlando, who went over and told her off pretty thoroughly, judging by his gestures.
August 7th 1953: 11:30 The spaniel man is here again. He has such a pretty dog, reminds me of the hunting dogs my father kept when I was a girl, so good at flushing out game from brambles etc. I had a very similar puppy once, which Father gave me for my 8th birthday, I wanted to call her Claret, because of the markings but he said that was too whimsical so she became Clarrie instead. I think a lot about the past these days, how lucky I have been through the years. The woman with the three poodles has returned: perhaps she has been away on holiday. Also the golden retriever man, the Scottie woman and a new one, a stranger, with a black-and-white sheepdog. All of them leave little piles of poo on the
green. The Canon used to say that the Council ought to make it compulsory to clean up after dogs, offer free plastic bags. Sometimes Dougal and Callum play football out there: I should hate them to slip and land in that nasty mess.
I continue to read. The same cast of characters appears over and over again, dog-walkers, fisherman, my family, friends from her youth, or her professional life. We move into late August, then on to early September.
August 20th 1953: Mossadegh overthrown in Persia. A good thing, I think, to bring back the Shah, a reforming monarch, who seems especially sound on suffrage for women etc. 15:41 Ava Carlton brings me the skirt she has mended for me. Such a kind woman, where would we all be without her? 16:20 Confused shouting outside my door, that dreadful man Yelland creating a fuss about something or other. And to think I knew his grandmother so well during the War. I wonder what she would make of him now.
August 25th 1953: Now that we are to move back to Oxford, Fiona plans to have a party. 13:06 she came to discuss details. If there are friends you’d like to invite, she says . . . I’m not one for late nights, but an hour or two downstairs can’t hurt. There is to be dancing, I hope she doesn’t expect me to do the samba! 16:01 Alice and Orlando here for tea. The blackberries are almost ready for picking, they tell me, it’ll be any day now, can they use one of the walking sticks from the hall?
August 29th 1953: 10:52 Cartland’s men bring a barrel of beer and a lot of cider for this party. I shall take a cup of ‘tea’ before I go downstairs on The Night! 14:22 look at my good Liberty paisley and discover it has moth! Ava Carlton will get me some mothballs, I’m sure, but I really don’t want to go round smelling of naphthalene, it’s so ageing. Dickie Tavistock’s boy appears to be infatuated with the red-haired girl, who behaves in a most unbecoming way, in my opinion. 17:40 Ava Carlton brings me some boxes so I can start packing away my books, ready for our move. Somehow I must summon up some energy. I’ve never felt so listless in my life. I shall miss the splendid sea-view from this window, and the light.
It’s September now, and Aunt is getting ready for the big move.
September 4th 1953: Tomorrow is little Alice’s birthday. Not that she is so little any more. I gather from Ava Carlton’s circumlocutions that the child has in fact started her periods this summer. It’s the end of an era in many ways for all of us. Leaving this house will be a wrench, all that is left of the Canon and my two boys is here. But we also lived in Oxford and I shall perhaps find them again there. And of course there are many friends still there, though I fear they’re not wearing too well. Saw Professor Mungo Starr at a dinner in London recently and he looked like an ancient tortoise. I remember him as a very well set-up young man indeed. The red-haired child was on the green today, talking to the wild-looking man who tried to take Ava Carlton away. Hard to believe AC could have been married to such a brutish specimen.
September 5th 1953. Spent the morning packing up things. Feeling very tired. I shall throw a lot of my clothes away before we leave here: more moths, into everything. I hope we can get rid of them. The mothballs Ava Carlton brought don’t seem to have done the trick. The house is buzzing, people coming and going all day, too many to record. Went downstairs at 18:30, to find everyone looking very nice. Even Yelland seemed to have made an effort, not something he does very often, unless it is to cause fuss and bother. The children were charming, Alice in a pink dress and Orlando wearing a tie to match. I gave Alice a diamond brooch from my jewellery-box, and although it is not his birthday, passed the Canon’s gold repeater on to Orlando, since he is the one most likely to appreciate it. Return to my room at 21:09. Being sociable is very tiring at my age and my hearing is not as good as it used to be. In addition, I am beginning to feel distinctly unwell. Does this have anything to do with Fiona’s dubious cooking?! Sit and watch the gleam of starlight on the sea. 21:32 Am astonished to see the spaniel man peering over the garden wall, like a spy. The Tavistock boy is in the garden, kissing the girl with red hair while she strokes the front of his trousers! A real trollop, I don’t know what young things are coming to. And she’s wearing too much jewellery, in my opinion: a gold chain, pierced ears, so vulgar in one so young, Alice’s pearls are just right for her age. 21:47 Orlando appears on the drive and the two break apart. The girl fishes in a bag she’s carrying over her shoulders and produces a hideous white mask which she slips over her face and illumines it from below with a torch. Orlando is staring across the garden at the man, who ducks down, and the girl jumps on him, yelling. He falls over and she laughs, as does the Tavistock boy. I shall try and have a word with him at some point. I can see Orlando is terrified, and angry, though he pretends not to be. He goes back into the house and the Tavistock boy follows. I tap on the window, wag my finger at the girl who sticks her tongue out at me. Can you imagine? 22:14 I pour myself a medicinal tot, since I am feeling rather ill, and it seems to do the trick. 22:30 people are beginning to leave. Callum and Dougal go down to the sea with a big group of younger people, presumably to swim, since it is a mild night. At 22:48 the red-haired girl sets off towards the cliffs, followed a few minutes later by the spaniel man, his dog trotting along beside him. The Tavistock boy walks in the same direction, carrying that golf club of his, for some reason. An assignation, I suppose, though why you’d take a golf club along on ‘a date’ I don’t know. I hope the boy is careful, I’d hate Dickie’s son to find himself in trouble with a girl like that. 23:08 Orlando appears, wheeling his bike down the drive, and cycles off after them. Oh dear, I shall have to call Fiona, I think, I’m really not feeli
The writing trails off, and there are no further entries.
Aunt died of a heart attack three days after she was admitted to hospital that night.
THIRTEEN
I have just taken a couple of roast chickens from the oven when the doorbell rings. Wiping my hands on a tea towel, I run down the stairs to the communal front door to find Mr Johnson standing on the doorstep. He looks like a corpse. There are dark shadows under his eyes, and his skin is grey and waxy. In the days since I last saw him, he must have lost at least ten pounds. I invite him in, close the door and lean against it for a moment, watching him climb the stairs. His steps are heavy, his shoulders bent.
I know why he has come.
I sit him down at the small café table in the kitchen, make coffee, and take a chair opposite him. He fists his hands together on the table, and sits with lowered head.
‘Are you all right, Mr Johnson?’
He shakes his head. ‘No.’
Behind him, in the big sitting-room, is a table covered in one of Aunt’s linen sheets and set with a pile of plates, Aunt’s solid silver cutlery, pink linen table napkins. Two crystal vases full of pink rosebuds sit in the middle, and glasses are grouped together at either end. Sixteen people are coming this evening to celebrate my birthday and I am very busy. But the significance of his presence overrides everything else.
‘Is there anything I can do?’ I ask.
‘No. Except listen to what I’ve got to say.’ He sighs tiredly. ‘First of all, I want to apologize. Earlier this morning I went to see Louise Farnham, as was – Stone, she’s calling herself now – and she told me you’ve never got over the shock. Over finding Nicola Farnham’s body, I mean.’
‘That’s true. But I—’
‘Like I told you when you came to the house the other day, I never . . . it never occurred to me that it would be children would find her. Not children.’
I say gently, ‘Why don’t you tell me about it?’
‘It was all because of the chain. The gold chain. It wasn’t on Valerie’s body, you see. I went down to the police station and asked specially and they said there hadn’t been any chain round her neck when she was found in Nicola’s bedroom. And I knew someone must have taken it, because she wore it all the time, she loved it. And then after they’d put Geoffrey Farnham away, Nicola and her mother came round to see us, to say goodbye, they were going to leave and settle somewhere else. I could hear
Mother screaming and crying when she realized who it was at the door.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘When you think about it, it was so hurtful. So . . . cruel, really. I have to say Louise seemed pretty ashamed to be there. She said that Nicola had insisted on saying goodbye and how sorry she was about Valerie, but she didn’t look sorry. I wouldn’t let them in, of course, didn’t want to talk to them, and then, when they turned to walk away, I could see the girl was wearing a gold chain round her neck, kept running her fingers round it. I didn’t think anything of it at first – I mean, why would you? – but later I remembered how Valerie used to tell us that Nicola was really jealous, wanted one just like it but her parents wouldn’t get her one. It took me a long while before I started wondering, putting two and two together and coming up with five. And by then, they’d left town, so I couldn’t check.’
‘Of course not.’
‘It took me the best part of two years to find out where they’d gone – Louise changed her name, you see, can’t say I blamed her, who would want people knowing her husband was a murderer? I finally tracked her down that summer, twenty years ago, saw a photograph in the local paper, some arty prize or other that she’d won, and after that, I couldn’t keep away. I spent hours watching for Nicola. Of course, Mother was still managing to cope at that point, hadn’t given way to depression and illness, so I was freer than I am now. And one day, I’m sitting on that bench out there . . .’ He gestures at the window. ‘. . . and Nicola comes up, cool as a cucumber, says, “Hello, Mr Johnson, what are you doing here, nice to see you again,” something like that.’
‘What did you say?’
‘Came straight out with it, asked her about the chain. And she laughed, said it was nice, wasn’t it? I said our Valerie had one exactly like that, and she said did she really? She had this nasty sort of a look on her face, almost . . . triumphant.’
