by Vicki Delany
“Then tell me about it.” She didn’t want to hear. Wanted to run with her hands over her ears and her head down. Run back to the hospital and the crowded wards, the exhausted sisters and broken men. But Ralph needed to talk, and only she was there to listen.
They sat back down. The sun close to a memory, a blaze of orange and crimson lighting up the gentle sea, a cool breeze blowing inland. They were the only people left on the beach.
“Do you remember, her? Amy?” Ralph asked.
“Yes, I do. She was very pretty. I remember that you were mean to her sometimes, although you probably thought that you were only teasing. She ran away one day. We were all at the cottage, except for Father of course. Even Grandfather was there; I remember he came up a great deal more that summer than was his custom. As if he knew that 1939 was going to be the last peaceful summer for a long time. Perhaps forever.
“She took her few things and left without telling Mrs. Czarnecki or anyone. Mother was most upset. Amy never even sent for her clothes back at the Toronto house.”
“She never left, Moira. Never. She’s still there.” His breath caught in his throat. “Except when she’s here. In Italy. With me.”
Moira’s chest clenched. She remembered well the day Amy had disappeared: Mrs. Brooks, the cook, rushing in full of apologies to serve the breakfast herself; Grandfather complaining that the toast was cold, and where was his marmalade—he always had marmalade; a sour faced Mrs. Czarnecki carrying clean towels up the stairs, grumbling at every step.
But what Moira remembered most of all was that Ralph had gone. Lazy, indolent Ralph had gotten up before the rest of the family and returned to Toronto. He left a scribbled note on his mother’s writing desk explaining that he had forgotten an appointment. She remembered Megan and Maeve, wide eyed, speculating out on the dock that their brother had run off with the maid. Of course, no such thing had happened. Mother phoned home to be told by Father’s valet that Ralph had arrived at the house early in the afternoon.
In her mind, whenever Moira thought about the disappearing Amy (which wasn’t often, she realized with a pang of guilt) she assumed that the fool girl had run off after a brief affair with Ralph. No one mentioned the matter again. Amy’s few possessions were packed up in a box and shipped to her only surviving relative, a sister in New York.
Only a few days later war broke out in Europe, so who had time to think about the strange disappearance of a servant girl?
But someone, obviously, had.
“Did you kill Amy, Ralph?” Moira asked, her voice level and calm.
“I might as well have.”
“Good. That means that you didn’t. Do you want to tell me about it? I suspect that we’ve missed the ferry to the mainland. So we have all the time in the world.”
“She was in love with me. I never told her she should be. I never lied.”
“Did you sleep with her?”
Ralph looked at her over his shoulder.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, you idiot. I’m an Army Nurse. I do know what sexual intercourse is.”
He blushed. It gave him an innocent, little boy look that she had never seen before. “Yes, I slept with her, most of that summer. It was a nice summer, wasn’t it M?”
“Remind me about her. Did you love her?”
The little boy disappeared. “Of course not. You want to talk like a soldier? She was a common slut. Of course I wasn’t in love with her.”
If she was in love with you, and because she was just the maid, maybe she wasn’t such a slut after all, Moira thought. But she kept her thoughts to herself.
“She told me she was pregnant. That she expected me to marry her.”
“And you wouldn’t.”
“Of course I wouldn’t, are you a complete fool?” Ralph was on his feet again, pacing up and down in front of her. “I told her I’d give her some money and she could go to Toronto. Have the baby there. I said I’d talk Mother into giving her a good reference. What else did she expect?”
He actually sounded pleased with himself, looming above her, large and aggressive, outlined against the setting sun.
A few dollars and a good reference. What else could a poor young maid expect? Moira opened her mouth to scream at him, her handsome, privileged, arrogant, self-centered brother. To release all her rage at the unfairness of the world.
But she remembered him weeping only minutes ago on her shoulder and his confession that Amy haunted his dreams.
“Stop pacing, Ralph. My neck is hurting. Amy didn’t take your money or your reference, I assume. So what did she do?”
“She killed herself.”
“Oh, Ralph.” As angry as she was for his callous treatment of a woman who had so much less power and position than he, Moira’s heart melted at the cry of pure pain in his voice.
“Did you…find her?”
“Yes. I went to her room. You remember? She slept in that cabin in the woods? The one furthest from the cottage? It was late, I’d told her I was going into town and that I’d come later. I knocked on the door. She didn’t answer. I thought she fell asleep, so I walked in. She was lying on the floor, dead. Both her wrists slit from one side to the other. The back of her head was soft where she had fallen and hit her head.”
“Oh, Ralph.”
“She used a kitchen knife. A big sharp one.”
“I remember Mrs. Brooks making a fuss about missing it. But why didn’t you call the police? Or the doctor? Or at least wake up Mother?”
“Wake up Mother?” Ralph laughed. It was a harsh, bitter sound, more of a bark than a laugh. “What good would she have been? Grandma perhaps, but she was visiting Aunt Laura after her miscarriage.”
“What about me? I was there. Why didn’t you come to me? I’d seen dead bodies by then. I was qualified.”
“Oh, M. Do you think I could go to my little sister and say ‘Come and see my mistress. She killed herself because she was pregnant and I wouldn’t marry her’?”
“No. Probably not.”
The sun had disappeared and the temperature was dropping fast. Moira’s hair was still wet from her last swim and the cold pricked her scalp. The drone of an aircraft sounded high overhead. Instinctively they both looked up.
“American,” Ralph said. “A bomber. Strange for it to be all on its own. They make good pilots, Americans.”
“What did you do?”
“I got Grandfather. He wasn’t happy at being woken up, but came down with me right away. He told me we couldn’t afford the scandal. Not now, he said, with war brewing in Europe. Father had some big contracts coming up that might be threatened by a scandal.”
Moira sucked in her breath. “And you agreed with that!”
“Oh, M. I wasn’t thinking straight. I’d had a lot to drink earlier that night. Of course I didn’t want Father to find out. You know what he was like.”
As straight and hard as a steel rod and just as unbending. Moira knew.
“Grandfather said that if they did an autopsy they’d find out she was pregnant. We had to get rid of her. So we buried her behind the cabin with some of her clothes and things to make it look like she ran away.”
He shuddered, whether from the cold wind blowing off the dark sea or the memory Moira didn’t know. “His dog followed us into the woods, kept scratching at the ground. Grandfather locked him in the garden shed and then I took him to Toronto. We were terrified the stupid creature would dig something up. What was that dog’s name?”
“Horatio.”
“That’s right. ‘I knew him, Horatio.’ Then we cleaned up her room.”
Moira’s mind reeled. Amy Murphy buried in the beautiful woods behind her family’s summer home. She remembered the last leave before she left for England. Walking through her beloved woods, ripe with the promise of summer. How she stopped to admire a patch of white trilliums, particularly thick and lovely that year, growing behind the vacant servant’s cottage.
She would never walk there again.
�
�You were foolish, Ralph. Very foolish. You treated a woman like a possession. A possession you could use and then discard. I hate you for that.” Moira rose to her feet, and placed her hands on her brother’s face, forcing his dark, tortured eyes to look at her. “But you didn’t kill her. If she chose to do away with herself, then the deed lies only with her. She was wronged, and you have to live with that. But she was weak. And you have no need to atone for her weakness.”
He smiled. It was a feeble smile, but a smile none the less.
She released him and bent to gather up the picnic things. “The ferry must have left simply ages ago and Matron will have my hide on a plate if I’m locked out. So I hope you have money in that pocket of yours.”
He laughed. “I’m sure we can find a grateful boat owner happy to transport two valiant Canadian soldiers to the mainland. Provided I offer to pay enough, of course.”
The steep stairs up the side of the cliffs numbered in the hundreds. But they were both young and fit and strong and they walked comfortably in each other’s company.
“But the cabin,” Moira said, as they approached the top. “I can’t imagine Grandfather helping you clean up the cabin. It must have been a mess.”
“Not too bad.” Ralph stepped over the rim of the cliff and reached back to help his sister up the last step. “There wasn’t much blood at all. I would have thought there would have been more.”
Not much blood.
As a student Moira had done a rotation in the psychiatric ward. She would never forget the young woman the doctors had pronounced cured and ready to return home. The morning she was to be discharged, she had barricaded herself in her private room behind a table and heavy chair and slit her wrists with a smuggled razor blade.
Once the orderlies had broken down the door, Moira was the first into her room. To this day, outside of the operating theatre, she had never seen so much blood.
Yet Amy Murphy had slit her wrists badly enough to die without leaving much blood.
Impossible.
Chapter Twenty-seven
The sun itself wasn’t up before Elaine. She opened one eye and peeked at her bedside clock. Five a.m. With a groan she rolled over and pulled the covers into a tight ball under her chin.
It was no use; she’d gone to bed so early that her body refused to settle back to sleep. She lay awake thinking about everything that had occurred since Thanksgiving. When a weak sun finally rose high enough to lighten the sky outside her window, she gave in to the inevitable and crawled out of bed and into the en-suite shower.
Tiptoeing down the stairs, she could hear the dogs in the kitchen and the sound of pots and pans rattling. She left the house through the front doors.
Phoebe sat on the blond wood rail that enclosed the deck, dressed in her usual colors, a dark sweater over black, skin-tight jeans. She was abnormally thin, in the fashion of the day, but her breasts were surprisingly full, the sweater straining at the seams. This morning she was without her bride-of-Dracula makeup.
“Off for a run?” she asked, rhetorically.
“Want to join me?” Elaine glanced at the girl’s thin sandals. “I’ll wait if you want to put on running shoes.”
“Thanks, but no thanks. Not quite the running type.”
“You’re up early.”
“Actually, I haven’t been to bed. I keep thinking about the fire. So horrible. And how horrible it must be to get old. The way Auntie Moira looked when Brad carried her out to the fire truck. So without dignity. She must hate losing her dignity.”
“I get the impression that sort of thing doesn’t matter to her much. Think of the things she saw and did in the war, and then again in Africa. Not much dignity in holding half a man’s head in your arms while he pukes out the last meal he’ll ever eat. But to be helpless, yes, she probably minds that, a great deal.”
The sun was rising in a clear sky behind the cottage, and the lake in front of them resembled a sheet of clear blue glass, laid out neatly, waiting to be placed into a gigantic stained-glass window.
Elaine walked down the steps and Phoebe followed. The two women strolled down the flagstone path to the water’s edge. A family of ducks sailed majestically off the dock. The young ones were almost full grown, anxious to test out their independence. Two broke away from the family and waddled up onto the shore looking for handouts.
“I would sit down here on a summer’s day when I was a child,” Phoebe said watching them, her voice distant. “Feeding the ducks bread and crackers. Grandpa would get mad at me. He says that feeding them encourages them to come around. That was rather the point, Auntie Moira told him. She always came to my defense. She particularly loved the babies when they were all fluffy and tiny.”
Elaine laughed. Getting nothing, despite looking cute and deserving, the ducks trundled back to the water in a rush to catch up to their family.
“I think you love your great-aunt Moira very much,” Elaine said, not looking at the girl.
“I do indeed. I hate to see her getting so old, so frail. She was terrified the other night, with the fire. She yelled at everyone that she didn’t want to be packed off to the hospital.” A large tear leaked out of the corner of one eye and Phoebe wiped at it angrily. “Why do we have to get old?”
If Elaine could answer that she could tell Phoebe the meaning of life as well. She kicked at pebbles under her feet.
“She told me some of her adventures. It was me who suggested that she should write it all down. I was so pleased when she said that she would. She’s a remarkable woman. I’m glad she’s part of my family.”
“She’s not dead yet, Phoebe. You talk almost as if she is. She has a few more strong years left in her.”
“Oh, I know. I guess this is all just so much, all happening at once. Do you know that Grandpa wasn’t released from the hospital yesterday?”
“No, I didn’t. I went to bed as soon as I got home and slept right through. I hadn’t had any sleep the night before. Come to think of it, neither did you. But what’s the problem with Charles?”
“They found something funny with his heart. Said he had to stay in until the cardiologist could check him over today. Christ, they’ll be giving us a family suite at the hospital soon enough.”
“People get old, Phoebe. Death is a part of life. My parents are both gone. And I miss them all the time. Like they must have missed their parents, and they missed theirs and so on down the line.”
“I know. But, Elaine, we’re the Madisons. We’re rich. We’re important. So why on earth, in the end, are we the same as everyone else?”
Elaine took Phoebe’s arm. “That’s life, kid. But look at it this way: Moira will live long after her body is gone, if we do a good job on her memoirs.”
Phoebe grinned with all the intensity of the sun coming out of nowhere on a dark, storm-threatened day. “You are so right, Elaine. I’m getting dreadfully morbid. Look at those silly ducks, they’re following us again.”
“A lesson in optimism.”
“I hope that you’ll let me stay on and help more with the memoirs.”
“I’d love it.” Elaine meant it. But even if she didn’t, she was hardly in the position to tell a member of the family to go away. “Don’t you have somewhere to be? School, a job?”
Phoebe shrugged. “School is okay. But I’m getting awfully bored with it. Maybe I could finish out the term and then come back. I love reading Aunt Moira’s letters, don’t you? I’ve always loved her the best of all the family, and the letters make me appreciate her more. She’s such a contrast to my own mother. And my grandmother. What a loser she is. I don’t think I’ve ever heard her say anything intelligent in my entire life. The way she defers to my grandfather is sick.”
“Don’t be too hard on her,” Elaine said. The sun rising behind them warmed their backs with the promise of a precious Indian-summer day. A motorboat sped past, far out in the middle of the lake. Not many boats at this time of year. The water would be full of them, come summer. The boat roun
ded the peninsula, the dull roar still hanging in the clear air. “Your grandmother is a woman of her times. Moira managed to break out of the mould. But it would have been an exceedingly difficult thing to do, and probably only possible for the eldest daughter. Once they saw that Moira was developing a mind of her own, your great-grandparents would have clamped down on the younger ones with a vengeance.”
“I guess,” Phoebe mumbled. “But my mom. She doesn’t have to be such a wimp. She’s never done a day’s real work in her life. She flits about from one charitable cause to another like Lady Bountiful. And then you should hear how she talks behind their backs. Like it’s people’s own fault that they’re poor, or sick or disabled or something. Makes me so mad.”
Elaine skirted that topic neatly. She had never met Phoebe’s mother, and had no desire to get into a discussion of her faults. “What’s your father like?”
“Non-existent.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I mean he’s still alive, and still married to my mom. Not that anyone would notice, and certainly not her. But he’s never there, physically, emotionally, or mentally. Never really was. He’s an Executive Vice President, la di da, with First Bank. Hope you’re impressed. He certainly is.”
Over on the island, a shape emerged from the thick cluster of tree trunks and brush and walked down to the water, carrying a large cooking pot. It was a woman, dressed in a long, colorful skirt and heavy knitted sweater. She stepped delicately out onto the rocks, trying to keep her feet dry. Rachel lifted her head and caught sight of them. She waved enthusiastically, her face breaking into a huge smile. Phoebe and Elaine waved back, and Rachel bent to fill the pot with water. Her thick red hair fell forward over her face.
“They won’t be here for long,” Phoebe said. “Now that they’ve gotten up Grandpa’s nose they’ll be given their marching orders.”
“That’s probably not entirely bad. Winter’s coming fast. They couldn’t stay for much longer anyway.”
“I guess.”
Elaine and Phoebe walked along the path that ended at the woods. The woods where no one ever ventured. Without thinking, Phoebe stepped off the path and continued. Elaine hesitated. With someone ahead of her, the sun rising in the sky, and the birds greeting it with enthusiasm, the dark path didn’t appear the least threatening. She took a deep breath and stepped off the path.
