‘No,’ I said. ‘She doesn’t belong here.’ I looked at him. In the midst of the pain I was beginning to feel I was aware of a rising curiosity.
‘Why did you ever bring her away? What was the idea behind it all? Did you want her so much? Enough to chuck up your career? All the things you set so much store by?’
Again he shrugged his shoulders.
I cried angrily, ‘I don’t understand!’
‘Understand? Of course you don’t understand.’ His voice startled me. It was hoarse and rasping. ‘You’ll never understand anything. What do you know about suffering?’
‘A good deal,’ I said, stung.
‘No, you don’t. You don’t know what suffering, real suffering, is. Don’t you understand that I’ve never known – once – what she’s been thinking …? I’ve never been able to talk to her. I tell you, Norreys, I’ve done everything to break her spirit – everything. I’ve taken her through the mud – through the dregs – and I don’t think she even knows what I’ve been doing! “She can’t soil and she can’t scare.” That’s what Isabella is like. It’s frightening, I tell you, frightening. Rows, tears, defiance – that’s what I’d always imagined. And myself winning! But I didn’t win. You can’t win when you’re fighting someone who doesn’t know there is a fight. And I couldn’t talk to her – I could never talk to her. I’ve drunk myself paralytic, I’ve tried drugs, I’ve gone with other women … It hasn’t touched her. She’s sat there with her feet tucked up, embroidering her silk flowers, and sometimes singing to herself … She might be still in her castle by the sea – she’s still in her blasted fairy story – she brought it with her –’
He had slid insensibly into the present tense. But he stopped suddenly. He dropped into a chair.
‘You don’t understand,’ he said. ‘How can you? Well, I’m licked. I’ve had her body. I’ve never had anything else. Now her body’s escaped me …’ He got up. ‘Take her back to St Loo.’
‘I will,’ I said. ‘And God forgive you, Gabriel, for what you’ve done to her!’
He swerved round on me.
‘For what I’ve done to her? What about what she’s done to me? Hasn’t it ever penetrated your smug mind, Norreys, that from the first moment I saw that girl, I suffered tortures? I can’t explain to you what the mere sight of her did to me – I don’t understand it now. It was like chillis and cayenne pepper rubbed into a raw wound. All the things I’d wanted and minded about all my life seemed to crystallize in her. I knew I was coarse, filthy, sensual – but I didn’t mind about it till I saw her.
‘She hurt me, Norreys. Don’t you understand? She hurt me as nothing had ever hurt me before. I had to destroy her, to pull her down to my level. Don’t you see – no, you don’t! You don’t understand anything. You’re incapable of it. You curl yourself up in the window-seat as though life were a book you were reading! I was in hell, I tell you, in hell.
‘Once, just once, I thought I’d got a break – a loophole of escape. When that nice, silly little woman came bolting into the King’s Arms and jammed up the works. It meant that the election was dished, and I was dished. I’d have Milly Burt on my hands. That brute of a husband of hers would have divorced her, and I’d have done the decent thing and married her. Then I’d have been safe. Safe from this awful torturing obsession …
‘And then she, Isabella herself, took a hand. She didn’t know what she was doing to me. I’d got to go on! There was no escape. I hoped, all along, that I’d just pull through. I even bought her a wedding present.
‘Well, it was no use. I couldn’t stick it. I had to have her …’
‘And now,’ I said, ‘she’s dead …’
This time he let me have the last word.
He repeated, very softly, ‘And now – she’s dead …’
He turned on his heel and went out of the room.
Chapter Twenty-six
That was the last time I saw John Gabriel. We parted in anger in Zagrade and did not meet again.
With some difficulty I made the arrangements which permitted Isabella’s body to be brought home to England.
She was buried in the small churchyard by the sea at St Loo where the other members of her family are buried. After the funeral, I went back with the three old ladies to the little Victorian house and was thanked by them for bringing Isabella home …
They had aged terribly in the last two years. Lady St Loo was more like an eagle than ever, her flesh stretched tightly over her bones. She looked so frail that I thought she might die any moment. Actually, though, she lived for many years after that. Lady Tressilian was stouter and very asthmatic. She told me in a whisper that they all liked Rupert’s wife very much.
‘Such a practical girl and so bright. I’m sure they’ll be happy. Of course it isn’t what we once dreamed of …’
The tears came into her eyes. She murmured, ‘Oh why – why did this have to happen?’
It was an echo of what had never ceased to reiterate in my own brain.
‘That wicked – wicked man …’ she went on.
We were united, three old ladies and myself, in our sorrow for a dead girl and our hatred of John Gabriel.
Mrs Bigham Charteris was more leathery than ever. She said as I finally bid them goodbye, ‘Do you remember little Mrs Burt?’
‘Yes, of course. What’s happened to her?’
Mrs Bigham Charteris shook her head.
‘I’m sadly afraid she’s going to make a fool of herself. You know what happened to Burt?’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Upset into a ditch one night when he’d had one over the eight. Struck his head on a stone. Killed him.’
‘So she’s a widow?’
‘Yes. And I hear from my friends in Sussex that she’s taken up with one of the farmers near there. Going to marry him. Man has a bad reputation. Drinks. Bit of a bully, too.’
So Milly Burt, I thought, was repeating her pattern …
Did anyone ever profit by having a second chance …?
I wondered more than ever when I was on my way to London the following day. I had boarded the train at Penzance and taken a ticket for first lunch. As I sat there waiting for the soup to be served, I thought about Jennifer.
I had had news of her from time to time from Caro Strangeways. Jennifer, Caro had told me, was very unhappy. She had complicated her life in an incredible fashion, but she was being very plucky over it. One couldn’t, Caro said, help admiring her.
I smiled a little to myself, thinking of Jennifer. Jennifer was rather a darling. But I felt no urge to see her – no real interest.
One doesn’t care for hearing the same record too often …
So I came at last to Teresa’s house in London and Teresa let me talk …
She heard my bitter diatribes against John Gabriel. I described the happenings in Zagrade to her and ended with the account of Isabella’s grave in St Loo.
Then I was silent for a moment, hearing the noise of the Atlantic breakers against the rocks and seeing the outline of St Loo Castle against the sky …
‘I suppose I ought to feel that I’ve left her there in peace – but I don’t, Teresa. I’m full of rebellion. She died before her time. She said to me once that she hoped she would live to be a very old woman. She could have lived to be old. She was very strong. I think that’s what I find so unendurable – that her life was cut short …’
Teresa stirred a little against the background of a large painted screen. She said:
‘You’re going by Time. But Time doesn’t mean anything at all. Five minutes and a thousand years are equally significant.’ She quoted softly, ‘The moment of the Rose and the moment of the Yew Tree are of equal duration …’
(A dark red rose embroidered on faded grey silk …)
Teresa went on, ‘You will insist on making your own design for life, Hugh, and trying to fit other people into it. But they’ve got their own design. Everyone has got their own design – that’s what makes life so con
fusing. Because the designs are interlaced – superimposed.
‘Just a few people are born clear-eyed enough to know their own design. I think Isabella was one of them … She was difficult to understand – for us to understand – not because she was complex but because she was simple – almost terrifyingly simple. She recognized nothing but essentials.
‘You persist in seeing Isabella’s life as a thing cut short, twisted out of shape, broken off … But I have a strong suspicion that it was a thing complete in itself …’
‘The moment of the rose?’
‘If you like to call it that.’ She added softly, ‘You’re very lucky, Hugh.’
‘Lucky?’ I stared at her.
‘Yes, because you loved her.’
‘I suppose I did love her. And yet I never was able to do anything for her … I didn’t even try to stop her going away with Gabriel …’
‘No,’ said Teresa, ‘because you really loved her. You loved her enough to leave her alone.’
Almost unwillingly I accepted Teresa’s definition of love. Pity has always, perhaps, been my undoing. It has been my cherished indulgence. By pity, the facile easy going of pity, I have lived and warmed my heart.
But Isabella, at least, I had kept free of pity. I had never tried to serve her, to make her path easy for her, to carry her burdens. In her short life she was completely and perfectly herself. Pity is an emotion she neither needed, nor would have understood. As Teresa said, I had loved her enough to leave her alone …
‘Dear Hugh,’ said Teresa gently, ‘of course you loved her. And you’ve been very happy loving her.’
‘Yes,’ I said, a little surprised. ‘Yes, I’ve been very happy.’
Then anger swept over me.
‘But,’ I said, ‘I still hope that John Gabriel will suffer the tortures of the damned in this world and the next!’
‘I don’t know about the next,’ said Teresa, ‘but in this world I should say that you had got your wish. John Gabriel is the most unhappy man I have ever known …’
‘I suppose you’re sorry for him, but I can tell you –’
Teresa interrupted. She said she wasn’t exactly sorry for him. She said it went deeper than that.
‘I don’t know what you mean. If you’d seen him in Zagrade – he did nothing but talk about himself – he wasn’t even broken up by Isabella’s death.’
‘You don’t know. I don’t suppose you even looked at him properly. You never do look at people.’
It struck me when she said that, that I had never really looked properly at Teresa. I have not even described her in this story.
I looked at her and it seemed to me that I was, perhaps, seeing her for the first time … seeing the high cheekbones and the upward sweep of black hair that seemed to need a mantilla and a big Spanish comb. Seeing that her head was set on her neck very proudly like her Castilian greatgrandmother’s.
Looking at her, it seemed to me just for a moment that I saw exactly what Teresa must have been like as a young girl. Eager, passionate, stepping adventurously forward into life.
I did not know in the least what she had found there …
‘Why are you staring at me, Hugh?’
I said slowly, ‘I was thinking that I had never looked at you properly.’
‘No, I don’t think you have.’ She smiled faintly. ‘Well, what do you see?’
There was irony in her smile and laughter in her voice and something in her eyes that I could not fathom.
‘You have been very good to me always, Teresa,’ I said slowly. ‘But I don’t really know anything about you …’
‘No, Hugh. You know nothing at all.’
She got up brusquely and pulled the curtain that was letting in too much sun.
‘As to John Gabriel –’ I began.
Teresa said in her deep voice, ‘Leave him to God, Hugh.’
‘That’s an odd thing to say, Teresa.’
‘No, I think it’s the right thing to say. I’ve always thought so.’
She added, ‘One day – perhaps you’ll know what I mean.’
Epilogue
Well, that is the story.
The story of the man I first knew at St Loo in Cornwall and whom I had last seen in a hotel room at Zagrade.
The man who was now dying in a back bedroom in Paris.
‘Listen, Norreys.’ His voice was weak but clear. ‘You’ve got to know what really happened in Zagrade. I didn’t tell you at the time. I think I hadn’t really taken in what it meant …’
He paused, gathering breath.
‘You know that she – Isabella – was afraid of dying? More afraid of it than anything else in the world?’
I nodded. Yes, I knew. I remembered the blind panic in her eyes when she had looked down at a dead bird on the terrace at St Loo, and I remembered how she had leaped to avoid the car in Zagrade and the whiteness of her face.
‘Then listen. Listen, Norreys: the student came for me with the revolver. He was only a few feet away. He couldn’t miss, and I was pinned behind the table. I couldn’t move.
‘Isabella saw what was going to happen. She flung herself in front of me as he pressed the trigger …’
Gabriel’s voice rose.
‘Do you understand, Norreys? She knew what she was doing. She knew that it meant death – for her. She chose death – to save me.’
Warmth came into his voice.
‘I hadn’t understood – not until then. I didn’t realize even then, what it meant, until I came to think about it. I’d never understood, you see, that she loved me … I thought – I was convinced – that I held her by her senses …
‘But Isabella loved me – she loved me so much that she gave her life for me – in spite of her fear of death …’
My mind moved backward. I was in the café in Zagrade. I saw the fanatical hysterical young student, saw Isabella’s sharp alarm, her realization, her momentary panic fear – and then her swift choice. I saw her fling herself forward shielding John Gabriel with her body …
‘So that was the end …’ I said.
But Gabriel pulled himself up on his pillows. His eyes, those eyes that had always been beautiful, opened very wide. His voice rang out loud and clear – a triumphant voice.
‘Oh no,’ he said, ‘that’s where you are wrong! It wasn’t the end. It was the beginning …’
Giant’s Bread
A MARY WESTMACOTT NOVEL
Agatha Christie
‘A satisfying novel.’
New York Times
Vernon Deyre is a sensitive and brilliant musician, even a genius. But there is a high price to be paid for his talent, especially by his family and the two women in his life. His sheltered childhood in the home he loves has not prepared Vernon for the harsh reality of his adult years, and in order to write the great masterpiece of his life, he has to make a crucial decision with no time left to count the cost …
‘When Miss Westmacott reaches the world of music, her book suddenly comes alive. The chapters in which Jane appears are worth the rest of the book put together.’
New Statesman
ISBN 978–0–00–649945–9
Absent in the Spring
A MARY WESTMACOTT NOVEL
Agatha Christie
‘The one book that has satisfied me completely – the book I always wanted to write.’
Agatha Christie
Returning from a visit to her daughter in Iraq, Joan Scudamore finds herself unexpectedly alone and stranded in an isolated rest house by flooding of the railway tracks. This sudden solitude compels Joan to assess her life for the first time ever and face up to many of the truths about herself. Looking back over the years, Joan painfully re-examines her attitudes, relationships and actions and becomes increasingly uneasy about the person who is revealed to her …
‘I’ve not been so emotionally moved by a story since the memorable Brief Encounter … Absent in the Spring is a tour de force which should be recognized as a classic.’
New York Times
‘Very readable indeed.’
Times Literary Supplement
ISBN 978–0–00–649947–3
A Daughter’s a Daughter
A MARY WESTMACOTT NOVEL
Agatha Christie
‘These books are dramatic, and concentrate on the solution to situations which arise out of the high tensions in life.’
Max Mallowan
Ann Prentice falls in love with Richard Cauldfield and hopes for new happiness. Her only child, Sarah, cannot contemplate the idea of her mother marrying again and wrecks any chance of her remarriage. Resentment and jealousy corrode their relationship as each seeks relief in different directions. Are mother and daughter destined to be enemies for life or will their underlying love for each other finally win through?
‘Miss Westmacott shows narrative talent – I should expect her books to be very popular.’
Observer
ISBN 978–0–00–649949–7
The Burden
A MARY WESTMACOTT NOVEL
Agatha Christie
‘Sometimes you haven’t the right currency. And then someone else has to pay …’
Agatha Christie
Laura Franklin bitterly resented the arrival of her younger sister Shirley, an enchanting baby loved by all the family. But Laura’s emotions towards her sister changed dramatically one night, when she vowed to protect her with all her strength and love. While Shirley longs for freedom and romance, Laura has to learn that loving can never be a one-sided affair, and the burden of her love for her sister has a dramatic effect on both their lives. A story of consequences when love turns to obsession …
‘Very much the art of story-telling that would be at home in the woman’s magazine.’
Times Literary Supplement
ISBN 978–0–00–649950–3
Come, Tell Me How You Live
The Rose and the Yew Tree Page 20
