“I don’t think that’s the sort of discovery Leo’s hoping for.”
“Neither do I … I’d appreciate your keeping quiet about it.”
And Alec had said he would, as, earlier, he’d spoken of his dissatisfaction with being Sellick’s errand boy and later had said:
“Don’t worry about me, Martin. I’ve no axe to grind.”
But what if he had? What if all that chafing at well-paid servitude to Sellick had just been to lull me into frank disclosure? What if he’d even then been running an errand for Sellick, to check on my progress, and had known his paymaster wouldn’t like what he’d heard? What if he’d reported back and been told that my dalliance with Eve must be stopped, that I must be put back on the straight and narrow? If so, Alec had had the means to do it, painfully but effectively.
As soon as we reached London, I dashed to a phone and rang Alec’s hotel.
“Mr Fowler booked out yesterday morning, sir … No, no forwarding address … I believe he said he was leaving the country.”
Yes, he would have done. Scuttled back to Madeira now he’d done his job. God, Alec, I thought, if you’ve really done this to me … then you’re no better than I am. What was the reason? What was the bribe? What price did you hold out for?
It was a long time coming. I hadn’t felt it when they’d denounced me in Axborough, hadn’t been able to feel it on behalf of Strafford. But I felt it now, stirring and seething within me: anger – a rising fury at the Couchmans and all they’d done and all they represented: a falsified morality that said the likes of Strafford and me weren’t permitted to succeed, weren’t allowed to be happy. Well, Strafford and I could prove them wrong. It was time to put the record straight. I had to see Elizabeth, the unheard witness, before Eve could get to her or Henry pack her off again. She’d lived too long to avoid a last encounter with her past.
It was a relief to find that Jerry had gone away for the weekend and that I could be alone in the house. I felt bone weary and decided to stay overnight, even thought – and smiled at the thought – of writing another report for Sellick. But there’d be no report. I wasn’t doing this for Sellick any more.
It was odd to think that I was, already, retracing my steps, yet in another way only just beginning, as if all before had been a dry run and this time the guns were loaded. Victoria, Chichester and a taxi ride to Miston by night. A room at The Royal Oak to lay up in, feeling furtive and resenting having to, feeling nervous about the morrow and knowing why. I’d waited a long time – Strafford far longer – for a word with this stubbornly living lady, the only one left with a foot in both camps, an existence shared between the real, spare presence of a room at a village inn – where the floorboards rumbled with the laughter of locals drinking after time – and the leatherbound, scarcely credible reality of a remote, remembered world. Another vigil, another dawn – a deed I couldn’t dodge.
I exerted myself to wait until a reasonable hour. Even then, it was before nine o’clock when I left The Royal Oak on a ludicrously sweet, bird-chirruping, bright-as-paint spring morning. A GPO van was parked by the post office down the road and, on the other side, a butcher in a striped apron was arranging chops in his window. Old ladies were pottering through the village dressed for winter, carrying wicker shopping baskets and trailing scottie dogs on leads.
The flowers in the garden were a little more luxuriant, otherwise Quarterleigh was as it had been a month before: the white gates, the forsythia, the gravel drive and the pink-washed house, recumbent in its fold of the Sussex Downs, with honeysuckle round its door.
It was not Elizabeth who answered the door. But it wasn’t Henry either. Instead, a cheery, red-cheeked dumpling of a woman in a flowered housecoat, smiling out of habit even though it was suspiciously early and she didn’t know me.
“Is Lady Couchman at home?”
“Ar, she is, but she’s ’avin’ breakfast. It’s a mite early to be callin’ on folks.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry. But, if she could spare me a moment, I’d be most grateful.”
“I’ll go an’ ask.” She lumbered off down the hall, then stopped and turned round. “What shall I say y’name is?”
“Martin Radford. She may remember me.” I hoped not, but pretence was pointless.
The housecoated lady returned a moment later. “Mrs Couchman” – there was no ladyship here, it seemed – “says you can come in, if you’re ’appy to take us as you find us.”
“Of course.” I followed her along the low-ceilinged passage, then turned behind her into a room with two windows looking out onto the garden, so that the occupant could have seen me coming.
In a chair on the far side of a dark gate-leg table was Elizabeth. I knew her at once, not so much from our one brief meeting at my wedding seven years before – though she’d changed little since – as from all the other, better, vicarious ways I’d made her acquaintance.
She was eighty-eight years old, but looked no more than seventy of them in her starched blouse and powdered dignity. The hair was shorter, of course, snowy white and simply cut, the face lined with a filigree of faded beauty turned to fragile charm, the mouth had lost its assertiveness and gained a winning humility. But the way she held her head as I walked in, the flash of her dark, glinting, unchanged eyes, were still as they were, for all the years, in that photograph on Madeira. If I’d been Strafford, walking in from a banished past, I’d still have loved her – for her poised serenity, her look of reconciled enfeeblement, her embodiment of so many memories.
“Martin,” she said. “How very nice to see you again.”
I was taken aback by this kindly, regal greeting. “Lady Couchman … I’m surprised you remember me.”
“Of course I do, my dear. We old ladies have little to do but remember. Would you care for some tea – or toast? Have you come far?” This can’t be, I thought. You can’t just welcome me like a favourite nephew. But she could and did. “Dora, could you possibly bring some hot water for the tea?” Dora waddled out. A black and white cat glared at me and made way reluctantly for me to sit down.
“No toast for me,” I said. “I’ve just had breakfast at The Royal Oak.”
“Really? It’s comfortable there, I believe. What brings you to these remote parts, my dear?”
“You do.”
“I’m flattered that a young man should want to look out this old stick.”
“I came to see you a month ago, but you were away. Your son was here.”
“Strange. He’s never mentioned it.”
“He wouldn’t. We’ve not been on good terms since Helen and I parted.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“In fact, I didn’t think I was on good terms with any of your family.”
“Well, that just shows you how wrong you can be, young man.” Dora rattled in with the hot water and poured some into the pot, then pottered out humming to herself. “Dora is such a dear. I don’t know what I’d do without her.”
“Does she live here?”
“Oh no. She comes in mornings and afternoons for a couple of hours to attend to those things I’m getting too old for.”
“You don’t look too old for much.”
She smiled. “Martin, if I were fifty years younger, I’d think you were trying to turn my head.”
“I am, in a way. Or rather, turn your mind, back a little more than fifty years.”
“Goodness – so far?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“You needn’t be. Reminiscence is one of the few things left to me.”
“The past isn’t always pleasant to recall. Look at my own.”
“My dear, I may be old, but I’m not taken in by everything people tell me. You had your problems, I believe, as did Helen, and naturally I’m sorry for her, because she’s my granddaughter. But you mustn’t judge me by my son’s attitude. Like his father, Henry is good-hearted, but inclined to be hasty. I try to judge people only by what I personally know of them.”
She looked at me as if she’d seen a ghost. Maybe she had. “Edwin? What do you know of Edwin?”
“More than you, I think. I know why you broke your engagement with him, which he never did. I know how he frittered away his life after you rejected him. I think I know what you meant to him, and what losing you meant to him.”
She sat back in her chair. “Martin, you alarm me. I’m not used to shocks like this.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” I rose and went to her side. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, yes. I think so. But please, what do you mean?”
“Would you like to sit in an armchair?”
“I think perhaps I should.” I helped her up. “It’s all right. I can manage.” A touch of vexation. She sank into a chair by the fireplace, recovered herself a little. “I’m forgetting myself. Do help yourself to some tea.”
“Not just at the moment.”
“Then please continue. I don’t understand what you’re telling me.”
I sat down opposite her, on the edge of my chair. “Elizabeth” – the use of her name seemed to come naturally – “I have in my possession a copy of a memoir written by Edwin Strafford in his retirement on Madeira. It relates his life in full, especially the period of his engagement to you. It professes a lifelong bafflement as to why you ended that engagement. I know that you discovered he was already married. But the Memoir contains no mention of such a thing, as if Strafford never knew he was married. I have this Memoir with me today, here in this room.” I pointed to the bag I’d dropped by the side of her chair.
“There must be some mistake.” It was a hope more than an assertion.
“There must indeed be – somewhere. That’s what I’m trying to find out. Would you like to look at the Memoir?” Without waiting for an answer, I fetched it from the bag and handed it to her. It seemed more fitting for her to receive it than anyone. It was, after all, written for her. Elizabeth held it as she might an original painting by a famous artist, not previously known to exist: cautiously, with nervous apprehension.
“Martin, my dear, you must understand how … unexpected this is.”
“I do understand that. It was uncovered by the present owner of Strafford’s property on Madeira. He’s hired me to research its background.”
“Which has turned out to be close to home?”
“Too close for comfort, to judge by your son’s reaction to my visit.”
Elizabeth smiled wanly. “Dear Henry would only have been trying to protect me. My engagement to Edwin is a painful memory. But not so painful now as it once was. If my dear husband were alive, he would probably throw this onto the fire. But I, alas, was always too curious for my own good.”
“Your late husband features in the document.”
“I see.” She nodded her head slowly. “It is then, as you say, thorough.”
“Yes.”
“Having read it, how much do you know?”
“As much as Strafford ever knew. But why not read it yourself?”
“Yes” – a firm set of her jaw – “I think that would be best.” She opened it carefully. “I see that it may take some time. Can you leave it here?”
“I don’t think you’ll want to put it down once you’ve started.”
“Don’t worry, Martin.” She smiled, with a defiant hint of mischief. “It’ll be quite safe with me. I am not my late husband – or my son.” I believed her. “But old ladies lack stamina. Suppose you were to return later. We could discuss it then.”
I had no choice. “Okay. About seven o’clock, perhaps?”
“That would seem admirable.”
“I’ll leave you then.” I rose to go.
“Would you mind showing yourself out, my dear? Dora becomes tetchy if called upon too often.” I assured her I didn’t and made for the door. “Oh Martin,” she called from her chair, “thank you for bringing this to me.” Elizabeth was the first to have thanked me for delivering the Memoir. I was flattered by her courtesy. “And, could you fetch my reading glasses from the table before you go?” As I did so, the cat glanced up at me superciliously from the seat it had reclaimed. “It is unquestionably Edwin’s hand,” proclaimed Elizabeth, once she’d propped the tiny gold-rimmed spectacles on her nose. “So strange to see it again after all these years.”
I wondered if she’d kept any of Strafford’s letters but didn’t ask. “I’ll leave you to it.”
“Thank you, my dear.”
As I walked away up the drive, I felt vaguely cheated. Elizabeth was old, charming and accessible. Her house was no fortress. There was in her no hint of bitterness at Strafford for hurting her or at me for reminding her of it. It had all been absurdly easy. I’d come and gone like a tradesman from the village making a delivery. Only this was one debt she couldn’t settle monthly by cheque. I’d be back later for payment.
An empty day, waiting on the reading speed and dozing habits of an elderly lady, gave me time to fret. I followed a chalk track up onto the Downs and back again in time for lunch at The Royal Oak. Afterwards, nervously, guiltily, I stole down the footpath by the brook to the wood where I’d spied on Henry. Quarterleigh, with Dora gone home, had a look of dormant normality. I’d half expected to see Henry’s car in the garage, but there was no sign of it. I’d known there wouldn’t be, had only gone there to quell an irrational fear.
That done, there was nothing to do but lie on the bed in my room at the inn and wait for evening.
A dove from the churchyard was cooing somewhere in the garden of Quarterleigh. Dora was back for another round of duty, depositing empty milk bottles on the doorstep as I walked down the drive.
“Missus said I were to expect you‚” she said neutrally. “You’ll find ’er in the conservatory.”
She showed me through. The conservatory was at the back of the house, looking down the sloping lawn to the brook, where small clouds of midges floated among the reeds. The room preserved an afternoon warmth, with rugs spread on a stone floor and potted plants exuding a musty aroma. Elizabeth was seated on cushions in a wicker reclining chair, with the cat on her lap and the Memoir, in its file, on a footstool by her side.
“Good evening, Martin,” she said.
“Good evening.” I looked out of the window. “Your daffodils are going over.”
“All things do, my dear. Please sit down.”
I moved a copy of Sussex Life from a canvas-backed chair and sat next to her, our seats arranged so that we saw more of the garden than each other.
“You have a lovely home,” I remarked.
“I feel at peace here, which is all I now seek. Alas, it is clear that Edwin never found that precious commodity.”
“You finished the Memoir then?”
“Yes, indeed. I’m seeing double and feeling heavy in the head, but I’ve read what Edwin had to say and I’m glad to have done so.”
“And what do you make of it?”
“Ah, that’s more difficult than reading. It is – what else could it be? – disturbing. Edwin’s Memoir reads in every sentence like God’s own truth. Only, I know it can’t be. It’s rather shocking to have it all told, so detailed, so personal, to have it read by a young man like you, to know that you know how I felt to love a man and be betrayed by him.”
“I do see that.”
“I wonder if you do. You said earlier that you know why I broke my engagement with Edwin. How did you find out?”
“A … colleague … found Strafford’s marriage certificate in the memorabilia Julia Lambourne – Mrs Kendrick – bequeathed to Birkbeck College, London.”
“Ah, so that’s where it went. I’ve sometimes wondered.”
“Could you tell me more about it?”
“I don’t really think I could. You see, Martin, I need a little time to adjust to this.”
“I understa
nd. It’s just that …”
“You’re eager for answers. I understand too. Do you have the certificate?”
“Not here. But I’ve seen it. It’s quite conclusive. Strafford married a Miss van der Merwe in South Africa in 1900.”
Elizabeth frowned slightly. “Quite so. But you wouldn’t think it, would you, to read this?” She inclined her head at the Memoir.
“No. That’s just the point.”
“Martin, my dear, I have a suggestion. Would you care to stay here for a few days? I’m sure it’s very pleasant at The Royal Oak, but here you could be certain the Memoir was safe” – she smiled – “and I could try to answer some of your questions, in an old lady’s good time.”
“That’s kind of you. I’d be delighted to.” I was impatient to hear what she thought, but didn’t want to jeopardize anything by pressurizing her.
“I’ll ask Dora to make up a bed in the guest room while you collect your luggage.”
“I’d better go straightaway.”
“Before you do, I have a question. Who is this man who has hired you? What is his interest?”
“Leo Sellick? He’s a hotelier on Madeira who brought Strafford’s house when it came onto the market. When he found the Memoir, it fascinated him and he’s employed me to satisfy his curiosity. I haven’t told him about Strafford’s secret marriage yet.”
“I see. So many people curious about my past.”
“It’s inevitable.”
“Not but for this.” She was right, but the Memoir couldn’t be disregarded, any more than Strafford’s marriage could be, except by him. Not that I had the impression Elizabeth wanted to disregard it. I think I’d brought it to her at the right stage of her life, when there was nothing left to lose – for her, anyway.
When I got back from The Royal Oak, Elizabeth had already gone to bed. Dora showed me to my room, then left. I settled in, feeling strangely at ease. There was a vast, feather-mattressed double bed, a broad, solid wardrobe, an empty wash-handstand behind the door, a sash window at floor level looking down into the garden.
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