The Mantle of God

by Caron Allan

  Dottie thanked her but still didn’t feel able to just go home. ‘Is there anything I can help you with?’ She’d noticed that Esme was still at her ironing table and making slow progress. Several times in the last hour, people had run in to drop off a bundle of garments or to collect a bundle, mostly errand boys or girls, mostly young and exhausted-looking.

  Miss Parsons appraised Dottie for a few seconds then nodded. ‘Well thank you, I can’t deny I need all the help I can get. That Esme’s a useless lump.’

  Esme, on hearing this, glanced up, sniffed, and turned back to the neverending length of tulle. Clearly she was used to such insults.

  ‘How it takes her so long to do the least little thing is beyond me, so yes, I’d be glad of your help. You look like you’ve got some sense in that head of yours.’

  High praise indeed, Dottie thought. For the rest of the day, Dottie worked hard to help Miss Parsons check her catalogue of costumes, ensuring they had all the right garments on the right rails for the scenes in order of shooting. The sizes were checked and double-checked against the lists of measurements of those who would be wearing the clothes, and after all that, they had to ensure all costumes were perfect and not in need of repair or laundering. On a couple of occasions an actress came running in to try on a garment, notes were taken regarding alterations and the young person would disappear again into the outside world.

  By the time Dottie went home, she was almost too exhausted to put one foot in front of the other. She had barely sat down the whole day and her head was pounding. She declined any dinner, taking a cup of tea straight up to her room, where she fell asleep, leaving the tea to grow cold. Needless to say, she still didn’t know when her screen debut would take place.

  Chapter Six

  FOR THE NEXT TWO DAYS, Dottie helped Miss Parsons and Esme in the wardrobe department. It was exhausting work, and when she reached home she ate almost nothing, but fell immediately into bed to sleep dreamlessly until her alarm woke her at five o’clock. It was a rare thing for her to be up before the maid Janet in the mornings, and not at all a welcome experience. But she enjoyed the work enormously, even though it meant working over the weekend, the cause of a further rift with her mother. Mr Manderson remained behind his Times newspaper for the entirety of Saturday and Sunday. It was safe there, and he couldn’t see the furious looks and pursed lips of his wife.

  How quickly life can change, Hardy thought. On the previous Tuesday, his life had seemed to be going along on a normal, if unrewarding, path. Looking back, he wondered that the Hardy of a week earlier did not have some inkling of the change that Fate, or whatever controlled the world, had in store for him and his family. A week ago, his mother had still been alive.

  ‘I’m just a little tired, William dear, that’s all,’ she had said to him on the telephone. Almost the last words she had spoken to him. Why hadn’t he realised?

  And now, not only was she gone from him, his siblings and their wider family, but she was already buried in the ground too. In just a week. Hardy had an arm about his younger brother’s shoulders. Although in his mid-teens, the sudden loss of their mother had pierced Edward’s fragile maturity and left him vulnerable and grief-stricken. In spite of this Hardy was glad of his brother’s company. Hardy missed the time they used to spend together. There were almost fourteen years between them but in spite of the age-difference, they got on well. He led Edward away to the waiting black-draped carriages pulled by black-plumed horses.

  After a lunch at a nearby hotel paid for, to Hardy’s great shame, by his mother’s brother, he said an emotional farewell to his sister and brother who were travelling back to Derbyshire to stay with their uncle and his wife. He thanked his uncle for all his assistance and promised to telephone in a day or two.

  ‘Leave the police force, come back with us,’ Uncle Joe urged, and not for the first time. ‘There’s a place in my business for a bright young man like yourself, and I’ve no son coming after me to take it on when I hang up my hat. At least promise me you’ll think it over. There’s nothing left for you here, Bill.’

  Oh, but there is, Hardy thought, and he thanked his uncle again for all his help and kindness. Once they had left, he had others to thank and speak to, then it was time to go back to the house. It was the part of the day he had dreaded even more than the sight of his mother’s coffin being lowered into the ground.

  He walked from the hotel back to the house. The air was crisp and held a promise of spring warmth. Birds sang. He noticed here and there a daffodil holding a golden head to the sky. He waved hello to the kindly neighbour woman who had sat up all that first night with Eleanor, but he was in no mood for conversation. He had already spoken to her at the funeral, and thanked her for her kindness. Everyone, it seemed, had been kind, so kind. He had had enough of it. All he wanted was to get inside the house and shut the door on the world.

  It was the chair that caught his eye as he entered the sitting room. A sudden rage swept through him at the very sight of it, at the memory of that evening only five days earlier when he had come into the room and seen her sitting there. The rage swept away all his sorrow and his lethargy, and he gripped the arms of the chair, wrestled it through the sitting room door, out into the hall and flinging the front door wide, with a howl of fury he threw the chair down the steps and watched it as it splintered, scattered, and came to a rest at the gate. He slammed the front door shut and marched into the kitchen.

  There his rage left him and he felt exhausted and unable to think. The fire hadn’t been lit for two days. The kettle hadn’t boiled. No meals had been prepared. He sank onto a hard, upright chair beside the table. Tears filled his eyes and he put his head down in his hands on the table-top and sobbed for the first time.

  Ten minutes went by before he realised the room was cold and dark. Only three o’clock in the afternoon but the kitchen was located in the back basement, and was never truly bright.

  He didn’t know what to do. There was nothing to do. Relatives had sorted his mother’s belongings the previous day, taking away everything but the one or two items Eleanor had wanted to keep. It was as if she had never been there at all.

  His cases had been divided up between colleagues, but he would be returning to duty in the morning. What a relief, he thought, with irony, it would be to really lose himself in work once more. The endless routine he had grown to hate would be most welcome. He wondered what had been happening in his cases, especially the robberies.

  He pushed away worries about the future, and getting up to pour himself a glass of whisky, carried both glass and bottle up the stairs to his bedroom. He sat in the chair by the window, sipping from his glass from time to time and thinking.

  He hoped the case wasn’t yet closed. He had vaguely noticed a newspaper stand from the hearse as they drove to the cemetery. The headline Dinner Party Thieves Strike Again had curiously heartened him. He had no idea how things were proceeding in the case but clearly there was still work to do. He just hoped he would be the one to do it.

  By the end of Tuesday, Dottie had still not had her moment of glory in front of the camera, as predicted by Miss Parsons, and she was well and truly fed up with hanging about the film studio trying to fill the time. She half-considered just not going in, but concern that this might be the day she was called, coupled with the fact that she had given her word, made her dismiss that idea almost immediately. She spent most of her waking hours in the company of the rather terrifying Miss Parsons and her much-criticised, rather spineless niece Esme.

  So it was an immense relief to meet her sister for a late afternoon tea not too far from the studios. Dottie sat stirring milk into her tea, half in a daydream, half asleep. Every part of her seemed to ache and she struggled to stay awake. Flora was chattering on and on. Her voice formed a kind of backdrop to Dottie’s fatigued and confused senses, and she only began to surface when, somewhat belatedly, she distinguished the words, ‘Poor William and Eleanor! It came completely out of the blue, apparently, t
here’d been no previous indication. So very sad.’

  Dottie stared at her sister, aware of a growing sense of dread. ‘What? What is so sad?’

  ‘Have you listened to a word I’ve said? I told you, it was in the newspapers, under the obituaries, ‘Mrs Isabel Hardy, suddenly at home, beloved mother and wife of the late Major Garfield Hardy, interment at St Frideswide’s, all friends and acquaintances welcome’, with today’s date. They must be absolutely devastated, not to mention the younger brother at Repton, and of course their older sister, the one with the young baby. What a terrible time they must all be going through.’

  Dottie stared at her sister even harder. Her eyes glistened with the start of tears. ‘Isabel Hardy? William Hardy’s mother? Dead? Our William Hardy, or...?’

  Flora gave a wry smile. She reached into her bag for a handkerchief and pressed it into Dottie’s hand. ‘Well, technically I’d be rather inclined to say your William Hardy, but yes the very same. Heart attack, very suddenly, last week. So sad. They must be completely...’

  ‘Oh my God! How terrible!’ Dottie gasped. ‘How bloody terrible!’ People at a nearby table glared at her and shook their heads over her bad language. Flora patted Dottie’s hand.

  ‘Yes, dear,’ she said, ‘that’s what I’ve been saying for the last ten minutes. The funeral was this morning. I sent a wreath from George and myself, and Mother sent one from the rest of you. And of course, I shall send a note of condolence. Poor William.’

  Dottie noticed the broken remains of a chair scattered on the little path. She stepped over the cushioned seat of it as she made her way up the steps to the front door, rapped smartly and waited for someone to answer. Looking about her, she saw a fairly pleasant little townhouse in a respectable, if not particularly affluent, neighbourhood. Certainly a much nicer home than their last, from what she’d heard of that. She turned back to the door. No one was coming, and so she knocked again, a little louder this time.

  Perhaps no one was home, she thought, but nevertheless, after waiting for another long, long minute, she tried the handle and the door opened.

  She stepped into the dim hallway, ignoring a slight queasiness in the pit of her stomach and pushing away memories of walking into another, similarly dim hallway just a few weeks earlier, and of the dreadful sight that had awaited her in the drawing room of that other house.

  A glance at the coat stand showed only William’s great coat and his suit jacket. His sister must be out then, and there were no other visitors. Of course, William himself might be out, the day was less chilly so he may have left his great coat at home. But where would he go on the day he’d buried his mother? Surely not to work, or out socialising. In any case, she had always had the impression he had few friends since the loss of his family’s wealth and position. So where was he?

  There were no lights on, the house felt abandoned. But if the door was open, someone had to be at home, or else, they had just forgotten to lock the door... She made her way through the hall and into the back of the house. She quickly scanned the tiny, old-fashioned kitchen, the even smaller and terribly gloomy dining room, and the much nicer sitting room, but they were all equally empty and chilly. No one was there.

  Feeling uncomfortably aware of how intensely her mother would disapprove, Dottie mounted the stairs, telling herself he might be ill, or the house might still be empty and therefore vulnerable to burglars.

  She went into the first bedroom. Clearly it had been his mother’s. The curtains were closed, but she could make out that the bed had been stripped, and everything looked bare and abandoned. Tears prickled Dottie’s eyes as she remembered chatting with sad, tired Isabel Hardy only a few weeks earlier. What a thoroughly nice woman she had been.

  The second bedroom was evidently Eleanor’s. There was a pretty feminine counterpane on the bed, and a few knick-knacks and personal items about the room: a picture, a scarf, a pair of gloves. Some jewellery in a small, battered-looking leather case. One or two other things on the dressing-table.

  The bathroom door stood open, the room cold and empty, lit only by the light from the street coming in at the tiny window. A tap dripped.

  The last door on the upper landing was closed. He was in his room then, she surmised, and here again she hesitated. Her mother would have been scandalised and had a great deal to say about the propriety of a single young woman entering the bedroom of a single young man. At any time of day, let alone after dark, and with no one else there as chaperone. It was yet another thing she must ensure her mother never, ever, heard about.

  She tapped on the door, and listened. Hearing nothing, and rather surprised at her own boldness, she gripped the handle and turned it. The door opened on a room in darkness, and her senses were assaulted by the overwhelming stench of alcohol. She could make out his form, sprawled and oblivious, in the chair, a bottle on the floor by his feet.

  She felt suddenly angry, and completely forgetting about any of the things her mother might think or say on the matter, Dottie marched right into the room, and before she even knew what she planned to do, she had slapped him hard across the face.

  It had its immediate effect. He sprang to his feet, confused and swaying, but furious, and swearing loudly and comprehensively, before he realised who he was speaking to. His words stuttered and failed. He stared at her. With an attempt at gaining back his advantage, he demanded with some aggression, ‘What the hell do you want?’

  His temper, his shock, restored her balance and she was able to tell him quite calmly and coldly, ‘I came to see if you were all right, and to offer my condolences. I’ve only just heard about your poor mother.’

  They glared at each other. His chest was heaving as he attempted to pull himself together, and at the same time, get a grip on his temper, borne as it was out of shock. He said nothing.

  ‘You smell terrible,’ she told him, and was aware that this was not the polite conversation of guest to host. ‘Go and have a bath and change your clothes. I’ll make you something to eat. You’ve got twenty minutes.’

  ‘I don’t...’

  ‘Do as you’re told, William!’ she snapped, and turning on her heel she marched back along the hall to the stairs, praying that her dignity would hold until she reached the kitchen.

  She had no idea if he would take any notice of her. She had seen her sister employ such tactics with her husband George after he’d come in from a night of carousing with his chums, although Dottie herself had never had the opportunity to tell a man what to do before. But as she entered the kitchen, she heard the sound of a door closing upstairs, and almost immediately a bolt was slid home. Next, as she stood looking about her and wondering what to do, she heard the sound of water running into the bath-tub. She smiled to herself. It had worked!

  Eggs, she told herself. Simple to do, and hopefully wouldn’t make too big a hole in the policeman’s budget. If there were any eggs.

  By the time William Hardy entered the kitchen, smelling a good deal better than half an hour before, and looking utterly ashamed of his bad language, there was a pot of tea on the table, and beside it, a plate of thick, buttery toast with scrambled eggs.

  She was seated on the other side of the table, cradling a cup of tea in both hands, and had she but known it, in his mother’s place. If he was surprised that a posh girl from a home with servants knew how to make scrambled eggs, or indeed even simple toast and tea, he said nothing, merely taking his seat, and with a nervous glance, saying first of all, ‘I’m so sorry for the...’

  ‘My mother would have been horrified,’ she told him bluntly, adding in a softer tone, ‘and so would yours.’

  He nodded, blinking, and bent his head to pour the tea and add a splash of milk. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked loudly. Damn all clocks, Dottie thought. No matter where one went, there they were, ticking away, and making a fearful racket.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again.

  ‘It’s all right. You’ve had a rotten time, I know. I’m so sorry I wasn’t ther
e this morning, I just hadn’t heard what had happened somehow. And I’m so sorry about your mother, she was such a nice lady. I would have liked to come to the funeral.’

  He nodded, but looked a little teary again, so to change the subject, she asked simply, ‘Where’s Eleanor?’

  That he could answer safely. ‘Gone to stay with my uncle in Matlock for a time. My younger brother has gone too. It’ll do them good to get away for a while.’

  ‘And when do you go back to work?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘So soon? Golly! But perhaps it’ll be a help to get back to work and keep busy?’

  ‘No doubt.’ He had finished the food and was pouring himself another cup of tea. He offered her more, but she shook her head. They observed one another in an uncomfortable silence then she rose from the table.

  ‘Well, I’m glad to see you looking a bit better,’ she said, unsure quite how to actually take her leave. ‘And once again, I’m awfully sorry to hear of your sad loss.’ How trite that sounds, she thought. I sound just like my mother. She dithered in the doorway. Then finally simply held out her hand to him. ‘Well, goodnight.’

  He took her hand, pulled her and brought her up against his chair. His arms came around her waist and for a few minutes he leaned his head against her, then recollecting himself, cleared his throat, releasing her, and got to his feet. He led the way to the door, holding it open for her.

  ‘Thank you for coming,’ he said, as if it was an ordinary social occasion, as if he hadn’t been slapped by her, sworn at her, eaten the food she prepared and held her in his arms. And before he could say anything more, halfway down the steps, she stood on tiptoes to kiss his cheek, then practically ran out into the night, hailing a cab almost immediately.