by Ruth Sutton
‘I wanted to put it behind me,’ said Jessie. ‘After all these years.’
‘Why bother?’ Caroline seemed to be talking to herself. ‘It’s been a secret all this time. No one any the wiser. I don’t know what to say, Jessie, I really don’t.’ She sat down again and stared out of the window. Jessie was shocked. She thought Caroline would be sympathetic, as Agnes had always been, not angry like this.
Jessie got to her feet. ‘That’s what I wanted to tell you, and I’ve done it now. I think I’d better go.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Caroline. ‘I need a little time … to take it all in.’ She put a hand to her mouth. ‘You’re not going to tell Matthew are you, about this?’
‘Well, yes,’ said Jessie, ‘I thought …’
‘Don’t say a word to him, Jessie. It could ruin everything. His girls – well they wouldn’t stand for it.’
‘I can’t believe that,’ said Jessie. ‘It would be a matter for Matthew to discuss with me, not his daughters, surely.’
‘As you wish,’ said Caroline. ‘My advice would be to say nothing more to anyone. Let sleeping dogs lie, I say. You can count on me.’
On the train back to Newton Jessie felt her confidence and belief in the future drain away. She knew her friends might find it difficult to accept that she had lied to them for so long, but she had not expected Caroline’s reaction. Her stay in Cockermouth had been strained and awkward and it was a relief to leave for an earlier train than she had planned. All that seemed to matter to Caroline was what Matthew Dawson might think, or his wretched daughters, about whom Jessie knew little and cared less.
Suddenly her plans for putting the past behind her, clearing away the lies and starting afresh, had been swept aside by Caroline Leadbetter’s fear of lost respectability. Maybe Caroline would calm down. Maybe she wouldn’t. Jessie saw a lonely future ahead of her, with only Agnes willing to be her friend. And what if Andrew was right about Agnes? Alone in the house, Jessie felt the walls of loneliness closing in around her, and for the first time in a long time she cried herself to sleep.
CHAPTER 22
LOW MORNING SUN BURST over the fell tops and pierced Jessie’s curtained window. She woke suddenly from deep sleep. Something, a memory or a dream was hurting her, sharp and unseen like a splinter below the skin. She lay still for a moment, uncomfortably hot in her winter nightdress. Her little bedside clock said it was after eight but she struggled to remember the day or the date. In a world without work the structures of time had blurred.
It was two days since her miserable visit to the Leadbetters. She had planned to be away for two days but the early return had left a day clear of obligations and she had done nothing and seen no one. Today she needed to do something, to soak up her energy. She would go the camp, and talk to Philip Andrews about what she could offer now that she had more time. He at least would be pleased to see her. She dressed carefully, happy to have a reason to do so. There was no hurry. Having more time than she needed was a luxury that Jessie revelled in.
It was nearly lunchtime before she arrived at the camp, and there was no one around. She put her head round the door of the empty office, and was heading off towards the main hall when she noticed Philip Andrews coming across the yard.
‘Good morning,’ he called across to her. ‘Didn’t expect to see you today. Have I got my dates wrong?’
‘No,’ she smiled. ‘I had some unexpected time and thought I’d just come down, in case you could spare me a little while to think about future arrangements. I hope I’m not getting in your way?’
Neither of them admitted how pleased they were at the unexpected prospect of cheerful conversation.
‘Come across to the office,’ he said. ‘I’ll make us both a drink.’
‘I thought I might have another chat with Piotr today,’ said Jessie a few minutes later, sipping a cup of coffee that Agnes would have been unhappy with. ‘He seems rather a lost soul. I’ve been thinking about him.’
‘Yes, he worries me, too,’ said Philip. ‘Coughing a lot, and not talking much to anyone. He’s around somewhere. Not well enough to go out today. He may still be in the dormitory.’
But the dormitory was empty. In the canteen, a woman who was wiping tables said she hadn’t seen him. They walked over to the chapel, slowly as Philip’s leg injury seemed to be troubling him. Jessie opened the door. It too was empty, but she had a sense that someone had been there. The faintest tang of tobacco lingered in the still air.
She called, ‘Piotr. Are you here?’
Her voice bounced around the painted walls. ‘He’s been here. Someone’s been here,’ she said to Philip who was standing behind her. They looked around, not knowing what they were looking for. Then she noticed that something was missing.
‘The cross, the one on the altar, where is it?’
Philip limped towards the altar. ‘The wooden one’s still here,’ he said, ‘but not the metal one.’ He looked around on the floor. ‘Might have been taken away, to be cleaned.’
‘Who would do that? Wouldn’t you know that someone had taken it?’
‘I would think so, but where else could it be?’
Another thought flashed into her mind.
‘The piano. Have you heard it?’
‘Not today, but –’
This time she didn’t wait, running from the chapel and across to the largest hut where she taught her English lessons and the piano stood in its far corner. By the time she reached the piano Philip had reached the door, leaning on the doorway, his face stiff with pain.
‘Sorry …’ he began, but Jessie didn’t hear him. She ran her hands over the piano lid, tracing faint lines in the thin layer of dust. Something caught her eye, a tiny triangle of white. She opened the lid. A folded piece of paper lay underneath. She snatched it up. The writing was small and hard to read in the low light. Standing by Philip in the doorway she held up the scrap of paper and read:
I have no hope. Forgive me please.
‘Oh God,’ she said. ‘Look!’ She thrust the paper at her companion and steadied herself against the door frame, her hand to her mouth.
‘Call the police, Philip. Something’s happened.’
She stumbled out of the hut and began to run.
‘Where are you going?’ he called after her.
Jessie ran across the yard, to where the path led down to the beach. Gravel gave way to sand. One of her shoes came off and she kicked them both away. The path led across to the dunes, stony in places and fringed by marram grass. She stumbled on a sharp stone and fell heavily, but picked herself up and ran on, taking off her heavy coat and letting it fall.
The final dune was steep and she scrambled up, using her hands before reaching the top where the beach lay wide in front of her. She leaned over to catch her breath. A skylark rose into the air, singing its liquid song. The tide was half way out, or coming in. She couldn’t tell. At the edge of the water, a hundred yards away, she saw a dark figure in a long coat, pushing out into the tiny waves.
‘Piotr!’ she shouted, but her voice was cracked, and it faded on the breeze.
Down the dunes she stumbled, onto the beach where large round stones at the top gave way to smaller pebbles and then gravel, dipping into a wide channel at the bottom of the slope. Another fall, and her knee protested as she rushed on with numbed feet on the cold sand. She stopped just long enough to see the figure waist-high in the sea ahead of her.
She shouted again, ‘Piotr! Stop!’ Ridges of sand made running difficult but she didn’t feel the pain, her eyes fixed on him. When he turned she stopped, gasping for breath. In his arms she saw the heavy altar cross, held tight to his chest. She could not see his face clearly, and he turned back again, striding on into the water.
The final stretch of sand was smooth and firm under her bruised feet. She ran into the shallows, through the creeping waves, up to her knees now, hitching up the heavy skirt that was sodden and clinging to her legs.
When she looked up again, he
was gone. The water ahead of her was flat, broken only by a slight swell and the faintest impression that the surface had been breached. For a second his head rose again, and then disappeared. She watched, helpless. Tears streamed down her face.
‘Piotr!’ she screamed, again and again, but there was nothing but the cry of a gull and the skitter of oyster catchers flying low towards the south. Jessie’s knees buckled under her and she fell. The water reached her shoulders but she sat motionless, gasping, beating with her hands on the surface. Behind her, Philip stood at the top of the rise, calling uselessly into the breeze.
Philip helped Jessie out of the sea and supported her along the endless path back to the camp, picking up her discarded coat and shoes as they went. By the time they reached the yard, a police car was pulling in. Jessie sat in the office, her clothes dripping onto the floor, while Philip talked to the police outside, and the two constables set off running down to the beach. They were not gone long. There was nothing to see, and nothing to find.
They left her alone, shivering by the stove in the office. Philip Andrews told the constables what he knew and answered their ponderous questions. The scrap of paper in Piotr’s spidery hand was passed around, held up to the light as if some other secret or solution to the puzzle might be found, before it was folded and pushed deep into a navy serge pocket.
Forgive me please, read Constable Eric Nuttall. ‘What’s he done?’
‘Topped ’imself,’ said the other.
‘Is that all?’ said Eric.
‘Piotr was a Catholic,’ said Philip quietly. ‘Suicide is a mortal sin.’ They nodded, still hoping a crime might be revealed, before heading off to retrace the desperate search of the camp that Jessie and Philip had made not long before.
Alone, Jessie sat with head bowed, the sweet tea they had made for her unnoticed on the desk. She did not hear the car, or the footsteps outside. Father O’Toole’s dark shape loomed in the doorway and she looked up.
‘What happened?’ he said, putting down his black bag and kneeling beside her.
‘He’s gone,’ she whispered. ‘He walked into the sea. I watched, I couldn’t stop him.’
‘Oh, my child,’ said the priest. ‘I came as soon as Philip called me. I should have –’
‘We all should,’ she said. ‘When we found the note I knew, but I was too late.’ She sobbed. ‘He took the cross, from the altar in the chapel. He was holding it. He saw me but he didn’t stop.’
‘Where’s the note?’
She nodded. ‘The police have it. We found it in the piano. It said: I have no hope. Forgive me. No,’ she hesitated. ‘Forgive me please. Just that.’
Jessie turned and buried her head in Father O’Toole’s coat. He put his arm around her.
The constables learned all there was to learn and drove away to make their report and arrange the search. Mr Andrews needed the office for phone calls and reports. Father O’Toole helped Jessie across to the chapel and sat with her.
‘I tried so hard,’ she whispered. ‘I tried to help him find some hope. I said we could find him a job here, but he didn’t seem to care. I told him to talk to you. He said his family would all be gone, but he didn’t know that, not for sure. So why? He was young. And his playing, so beautiful. Why did he do it?’
‘We can’t tell, Jessie,’ he said, holding her hand. ‘We can’t even guess. He was a private soul and we could not reach him. Perhaps he was very sick. Maybe that affected him. Bless you for caring for him, for trying to help. You did all you could. Don’t blame yourself.’
She was crying as if the tragedy had unleashed sadness held back for many years. He took her home in the old car. Nellie was there, and together they helped Jessie up the stairs. Nellie promised to stay a while. Father O’Toole found Agnes’s London phone number and called it, leaving a vague message with a posh anonymous voice for Agnes to call him or her friend at Applegarth as soon as she could. Then he drove away, leaving Jessie to sleep and Nellie to make some food for her when she woke.
It was two days before they found Piotr’s body. It had been pulled out to sea by the ebbing tide and then drifted north and was beached further up the coast, exactly where the local policeman had expected. Piotr had tied the cross to his chest with a woollen scarf and in the pockets of the coat were large stones from the beach. A strand of bright green seaweed trailed across one pale cheek.
CHAPTER 23
THE HEARSE WOUND THROUGH late spring lanes whitened with cow parsley, to the Catholic church in Millom. Behind the hearse was a bus filled with men in their faded pre-war suits, and behind the bus two flatbed trucks, like tumbrils to the scaffold, with more of the men standing together on the back. Jessie rode with Philip in his car. It was six days since Piotr’s death, six dawns when she woke with the birds and lay sad and regretful, remembering the music and his slow, beautiful, accented voice.
‘He had such promise,’ Jessie had said to Agnes on the telephone the morning after Piotr’s death. ‘His English was coming on so well, he could have found a job if he’d wanted to.’
‘Perhaps he didn’t want to,’ said Agnes, sensing the desperation in her dear friend’s voice.
‘I wanted to help him, but I couldn’t reach him. Father O’Toole has been wonderful. I know he’s right, but still I feel we should have known.’
‘Did you say Father O’Toole,’ said Agnes, ‘Is he the priest at the camp?’
‘Yes,’ said Jessie. ‘I forgot. He says he knew your father, in Carlisle. Do you know him yourself?’
‘Only by reputation,’ said Agnes. She hesitated. ‘He had some trouble, ages ago, in Silloth or somewhere up there, on the Solway coast. I think it was about a woman. My father mentioned it once. And there was a picture of him. A good-looking young man, as I recall. It was a long time ago.’
‘I think he’s wonderful,’ said Jessie.
‘Be careful,’ said her friend.
* * *
‘Piotr took his own life,’ Jessie said to Philip as they followed the hearse into the town. ‘Isn’t that a mortal sin?’
‘Makes no difference to Father O’Toole,’ he said. ‘He called it an unfortunate accident and there was never any doubt about a proper funeral. I’m not a Catholic, but the man’s a hero. Are you a Catholic, Jessie?’
‘Not much of anything really. I wish I was. It must help, at times like this.’
‘Nothing helps. A needless death. I wonder, did we miss something? Was there any hint of it?’
‘He was very sad,’ she said slowly. ‘Sad about his family. He couldn’t see a way out, or a way forward. But I had no idea. Could we have done anything?’
Philip shook his head.
People in the street stopped and stared at the hearse and the trucks loaded with men in their shabby suits.
‘Piotr said the locals hate them. Is that right?’ she asked him, watching the expressionless faces turned towards them.
Philip looked at her. ‘Some people hate what they don’t understand, strangers, new ideas. That way they don’t have to deal with them. Some people are kind. It varies. When the men go to local dances at the weekend, they tell me that in some places the girls will dance with them, and in other places nobody will. They end up dancing with each other.’
Six of the men, all from Poland, carried the coffin between them from the hearse to the porch where Father O’Toole was waiting with two altar boys. They filed into the empty church. Someone was playing the organ. Jessie recognised the music that Piotr had played for them himself on the piano at the camp. They sang the old hymns. One of the men read a poem in Polish and a group of them sang, the unfamiliar tune echoing around the church. Jessie tried to sing the hymn that followed but she could not. Her voice cracked and wavered and she gave up. Even before Father O’Toole began to speak, she had fumbled for a fresh handkerchief in her bag. Philip squeezed her hand.
‘Let us remember Piotr,’ said the strong Irish voice. ‘For seventeen years, it was a good life, the youngest child and
much loved. So talented, such wonderful music. And then the evil of war caught him and so many millions of young men around the world. He was as much the victim of war as anyone killed on a battlefield. He struggled, but the evil overcame him and swept him aside. He did not know, nor do we, where his family are, if they survive at all. They cannot mourn, so we will mourn for them, for this young man, taken to God so early, too early. We will remember him.’
Jessie bent her head and wept. Philip drove her home before leaving to drink and sing with the men back at the camp. It was only six o’clock, but Jessie drew her bedroom curtains and lay down.
The rest of the week dragged slowly by. Philip had cancelled classes for a few days and Jessie did not go to the camp. Agnes was in London with no plans to return. Caroline Leadbetter had not been in touch since Jessie’s visit. There was no word from Matthew Dawson, and Jessie wondered if anything had been said.
The weather was better than it had been for months and she tried to walk every day, letting the spring sunshine cheer her. At the church in Newton the last of the precious daffodils still nodded by the river. Jessie sat in an old box pew there for a little while each day, letting her sadness flow, before putting on a braver face for public view. But the nights were long and difficult. Among Agnes’s records she found some Chopin piano music and played it repeatedly, sitting motionless in her chair by the empty grate. She was there when John knocked on the window early on the Friday evening, making her start. She saw his familiar shape silhouetted against the brightness of the garden where it caught the long light from the west. She turned off the record player before she answered the door.
‘I rang the bell,’ he said, ‘but you can’t have heard it. The music was really loud.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Come in.’
They sat in the front room. ‘Do you want something?’ she said. She did not really want to be disturbed, and John’s rare visits usually heralded something upsetting.
‘I have some news,’ he said, ‘but you look very tired. Are you alright?’
