by Barbara Vine
I said of course I would and then that I must go. He shook hands with me very formally, as he had in the church porch on the day we first met.
‘I suppose they'll put him in an asylum,’ he said.
The word, old-fashioned even then, was new to me. In the thirty-five years gone by it has utterly changed its meaning, a mental hospital in those days, a place of safety for refugees now. I looked it up in Esselte when I was back at Lydstep, having some difficulty because I didn't know how to spell it. After that I went into the library and looked for it in the massive Shorter Oxford Dictionary which I had once found John reading. 1. a sanctuary, it said, for criminals and debtors, from which they cannot be forcibly taken without sacrilege. 2. a secure place of refuge or shelter. And, finally, after other definitions, a lunatic asylum.
So John was a criminal or a lunatic or both. This place was his sanctuary, I thought, books surrounding me in the dimness, and he was forcibly taken from it. That was the sacrilege.
26
Several times during that evening the phone rang. With nothing to do but read and nothing to read but third-class Victorian novels, I wrote an account of the day in the diary. Who had made those calls? Eric, perhaps. Felix, if Ella had phoned him first. The police? They had left at about six but they might easily have called back. Jane Trintowel for me? If Mrs Cosway or Ida had answered I thought it unlikely they would have told me.
Ella tapped on my door just after nine and came in carrying a bottle of rosé.
She glanced at the remains of my meal, crumbs and chocolate bar wrappers. ‘You should have come down for dinner.’
‘I'd have been banished to the kitchen,’ I said.
‘Mother will get over all that, you know. It's just that she's in a state.’
‘Is she, Ella? Is anyone in a state except John? I'm sure he is. I don't like to think of the kind of state he's in.’
‘Oh, nor do I, nor do I. It's dreadful. Come on, let me give you a drink. I've brought wine glasses. It's not the same drinking it out of a cup, is it?’ Ella drank her first glassful as if it were water. ‘That's better. I phoned the White Rose like I said. That girl who works the bar answered. I didn't much like that but I thought, in for a penny, in for a pound. I said, “It's Tamara” and she didn't wait for me to say I wanted Felix, she just said, “He hasn't been in today” and put the phone down.’
Another of his women, I thought. This seemed not to have occurred to Ella. ‘I suppose he stayed away out of respect,’ she said. ‘Unlike him, but you never know how this sort of thing is going to affect people.’
‘No, you don't.’
‘I'll try again tomorrow and if he still doesn't phone I think I'll go down to The Studio. I miss him so terribly, Kerstin. You asked if anyone was in a state. I am, I really am. Sometimes I think I'm going mad. Of course there's madness in our family. Look at John.’ She picked up the diary but put it down again, saying, ‘Fancy you writing it in Swedish. It's like a code, isn't it? I suppose you do it so that no one but you can read it.’
‘Other Swedes could.’
‘Well, of course. But there aren't any here, are there? Zorah phoned. Imagine, no one had bothered to tell her. She had to read it in the paper. She's coming down. Oh, and a man called Mark phoned, asking for you. I heard Mother tell him she couldn't take phone calls at this time of night. I'm afraid I didn't take much notice because it wasn't Felix, you see.’
The snow which had loaded the skies began to fall that night and much more heavily than last time. Lydstep Old Hall was filled with the peculiar white glow which radiates from snow, lighting hall and rooms and even passages more than the sun ever did. Sick of being in my bedroom, I came down early and found the table laid and no one in the dining room but Ida. In overall and carpet slippers, a lock of hair at her forehead twisted into a curl with a clip, she looked up from her bread and butter to say a cold ‘Good morning’, as icy as the weather. Her hands were bandaged from forearm to fingertips like a mummy's.
I poured my coffee, almost elated to find that it had been made, for no one but me ever drank it. I thanked her and she said, ‘I always do make it,’ in the sort of voice that implied my ingratitude, her own stoicism and the enormous effort making coffee took. Just as I had cracked the shell on my egg and was lifting my first piece of toast to my lips, Mrs Cosway appeared. She had taken once more to the stick she had discarded a month before and was leaning on it, her body bent and her face grim. I wondered why the stick. She didn't need it and had always cursed it when using it was essential. The hand which grasped its hooked top was bandaged like Ida's but the other one had no more than a plaster round the thumb. Neither Ida nor I had a word from her. Breakfast was eaten in silence until Ella came in, wanting to know if anyone intended to go to church.
‘One of us should. Winifred would have wished it.’
‘Don't be ridiculous,’ said Mrs Cosway, her voice creaky from lack of use.
That morning I had the curious feeling that everything would continue at Lydstep Old Hall just as it was at that moment. Ella would go back to school, of course, I would leave as soon as the police would let me, but Ida and Mrs Cosway would continue to live here in this cold calm, Mrs Lilly coming in twice a week, the gardener gardening, the phone ringing only at prescribed times. The promise Zorah had made would be carried out and she would never be seen again. Nor would John. He would be incarcerated for the rest of his life in a high-security mental hospital or, as Eric called it, an asylum. And this state of affairs was what Mrs Cosway wanted, had wanted for years.
Ella and I went to church. She asked me to go with her. It suddenly seemed dreadful to me that she should have to go alone when she had previously always been accompanied by Winifred, even though the terms they had been on were seldom friendly and often hostile.
‘You'll say I'm only going because Felix might be there,’ she said as we drove down the hill.
Even if I had thought such a thing I wouldn't have said it but I was accustomed to this usage of hers and this was no time for arguing. Tiny flakes of snow, pinhead size, pattered lightly against the windscreen. The sky was leaden, the colour it is before a summer storm. There was an umbrella in the car and I held it over both of us as we ran into the church porch.
A few regulars came to the service but most of the people I knew stayed away, whether because of the snow or the fear of awkwardness if a Cosway came, I couldn't tell. Mr Trewith, he who heard confessions, took the service, and the architect's wife was there, fetching in a Russian fur hat, but Felix didn't come. Ella watched for him, turning her head from the pew he had once or twice sat in to the door and back again several times until Mr Trewith came down the chancel steps and began telling us that the scripture moved us in sundry places. Alone of the congregation, Mrs Waltham and the architect's wife came up to Ella afterwards and said how sorry they were. After they had gone I asked Ella what she was called.
‘The architect's wife? I don't know. I don't think anyone knows. I used to be so jealous because Felix admired her. Well, I still am. I can't bear him even looking at another woman.’
And then he was upon us.
A meeting was unavoidable. He had been to see Eric and was coming down the Rectory drive to the gate. We were leaving the churchyard by the gate which was next to it, as near as the entrances to two semi-detached houses.
‘Good morning, ladies,’ he said.
We might have been any two women from the village, June Prothero's mother perhaps and Mrs Cusp. His tone was polite, indifferent, cheerful. In spite of the cold, he wore no coat over his check flannel shirt and jeans. Something about his appearance made me think of the leading actor in one of those western films and I felt I should be looking about me for his horse. What Ella felt showed plainly in her face. She had gone very white and suddenly she looked much older than she was. She lifted her eyes to Felix's face and, to my alarm, took hold of him by his upper arms, clutching the stuff of his shirt.
‘Oh, Felix, how can you speak to me
like that?’
He appealed to me. ‘What have I done?’ I think he genuinely didn't know. ‘I'm sorry if I've put my foot in it. Believe me, I'm pretty upset myself about what happened to Winifred.’
He was one of the few people I have ever known with no feeling of empathy whatsoever. He simply seemed to believe that other people felt the same about things, everything, as he did. In this, curiously, he was behaving like a high-functioning autistic. Ella was near to tears and when she spoke her voice rose. Mr Trewith, coming down the path with Bill Cusp, turned his head sharply away, as did his companion.
‘Winifred's dead but I'm alive,’ Ella said. ‘Have you forgotten what we've been to each other?’ Her voice rose. She held on to his shirt, shaking it and shaking him. ‘Have you, Felix? I love you. I want to be with you again. You said you loved me. Didn't you? Didn't you?’
‘I never did,’ he said. ‘I'm sure I never did.’
He seemed to stop in mid-sentence. ‘I never do say it,’ was what I am sure he was holding back. He was not in the least embarrassed. I suspect he had been through this kind of thing too many times for awkwardness. Slightly shaking his head, he tried to prise apart the fingers that clutched his shirt.
‘Let go,’ he said. ‘Now, come on. Let go of me.’
‘I will never let you go!’
Incredibly, he began to laugh. It sounded real. It sounded as if he found the situation hilarious. I turned away then, I walked away, unwilling to do a Cosway and tell Ella to keep her voice down. It would anyway have been too late. She was beyond control, his laughter touching the switch that released her screaming and loosened her hands. She began to beat them against his chest but he ducked and ran away from her across the Memorial Green.
‘As if all the devils in hell were after him,’ Mrs Cusp remarked to me. She had been part of the little crowd which gathered to watch the fun. I took Ella by the arm and put her into the passenger seat of the car, where she rocked herself back and forward, sobbing and clutching handfuls of her hair. Without waiting for her to calm down – something which might have taken a long time – I drove us back to Lydstep Old Hall.
The drawing room, which had been out of bounds for three days, by Monday morning was once again made accessible to the family. Ida had made a fire in the grate, logs piled precariously high but the fender securely in place. The police had performed all their tasks and tests and cleaned up, the sergeant recommending Ida to have the place redecorated if she wanted all the stains eradicated. The spots and stains and splashes could still be seen, though bleached to a yellowish-brown so that, if you didn't know, you wouldn't have identified them as made by flying blood. At first I thought that all remains of the Roman vase had gone too, that priceless object I had seen John stroking reverently, but crossing to the window, I spotted a green shard winking in the snow-light. It was half embedded in the carpet, its sharp point sticking up out of the faded pile. That is how I happen to have it still, not from souvenir-hunting but because I picked it up for fear someone would tread on it. I put it in the pocket of my skirt. By the time I found it again Mrs Cosway had turned me out of Lydstep Old Hall.
The police came back just as she and Ida were returning to the drawing room, Ida with new knitting wool and needles, the bloodstained grey discarded. This time it was Strickland and the sergeant. A calm and tragic Ella, a kind of Mourning Becomes Electra figure, brought them in. Strickland said, ‘I'd like a few words with Miss Kvist.’
Without saying so, he indicated by not taking a seat and holding the door open, that the interview was to be in private.
‘You can talk to her here,’ said Mrs Cosway. ‘She has nothing to say that she can't say in front of us.’
‘I won't keep you more than a minute or two, Miss Kvist,’ Strickland said. ‘The purpose of my visit is to ask you if we might borrow your diary.’
Mrs Cosway's face was frightening. I got up and Strickland followed me out of the room, leaving the sergeant behind. The request had shaken me, as I think it would most people. Unless we are the sort of people who keep diaries for future publication, we think of this record as more private than our thoughts and more secret than the most awkward moments of our pasts.
‘Will it help John Cosway?’ I said as we went upstairs.
‘Does he need help?’
I said I didn't know. Could he tell me where John was and what had become of him?
‘He hasn't been charged,’ Strickland said. ‘I don't know yet if he will be. At present he is in hospital.’ The sight of my stricken face must have made him say quickly, ‘As a voluntary patient.’
‘Does Mrs Cosway know all this?’
‘Of course. I'm surprised no one has told you.’
I wasn't surprised. We went into my bedroom. Bright sunshine streamed through my windows, melting the long icicles which hung, dripping, from the eaves. I took the diary out of the drawer where I kept it and handed it to him.
‘We have a translator lined up,’ he said.
Dreading his answer, I asked him if it would be produced as evidence in court at John's trial; to my immense relief he shook his head, saying it was for the eyes of the investigating officers only and for counsel. My knowledge of English law was almost nil. If Strickland thought my ignorance profound when I asked him if John could be executed, he gave no sign of it. He seemed unaffected by my drawings.
‘The death penalty for murder came to an end three years ago,’ he said, leafing through the diary with its incomprehensible language. ‘It was suspended under the Abolition of Death Penalty Act of 1965.’
I asked him what the punishment now was.
‘Imprisonment for life.’
He moved towards the door. ‘A beautiful day for the time of year,’ he said. ‘Now that your duties here have ended, for the time being at least, you may be tempted to leave. Please remember we would like you to remain for the present or let us know at once if you – well, change your place of residence.’
It was as if he knew what was coming, though this was impossible. ‘I'll see myself out, Miss Kvist. We shall take good care of your diary.’
I felt strangely bereft without it. Since then I have been told this is a common reaction of diarists to being deprived, through losing it, having it stolen or simply coming to the end of the volume, of the physical thing itself, the book, in which the words have been written. A substitute will be adequate but only just. That which is remembered flows less smoothly when it is applied to different paper between alien covers. Much worse would be to stop writing altogether, so I found a notebook I had bought for some forgotten purpose and wrote down, faithfully but with less than my usual enthusiasm, the events of the evening before and that morning.
I felt a strong reluctance to go downstairs. The sun was as high in the sky as it ever gets at that time of the year and the icicles had shrunk to half their length. I saw how they might themselves be regarded as a sort of clock, the rate at which they dissolved depending on their length, their thickness and the heat of the sun. These, for instance, had diminished by about fifteen centimetres in an hour and a half. Somehow I was sure that all this would have interested John very much, that I could have told him about it, talking to him in a way, alas, I never had while he was here. I wrote all these reflections down and then I went downstairs.
Mrs Cosway and Ella were in the drawing room and I could hear them arguing about whether Ella should return to school or wait another week. In keeping with her usual attitude of getting her children out of the way as much as possible and then growing resentful at their absence, Mrs Cosway was telling Ella it was her duty to go back while Ella was responding that she was too sad and too wretched even to consider it. Was I her only hearer who knew the real cause of her misery? I went into the kitchen, from where I could see Ida pegging washing out on the line. It reminded me of my first day at Lydstep Old Hall when she had been doing the same thing on a fine summer's evening with John to help her.
I looked in the fridge to see what was for lu
nch and set about peeling potatoes and cleaning a cauliflower. Her hands in cotton gloves, Ida came back with her empty washing basket and my whole body tensed as I waited for a curt nod from her or a shrug. But she was as affable as she ever was, not very, that is, but it was a great improvement on her breakfast greeting.
‘You've started on the vegetables, I see.’
I agreed, the point being beyond doubt.
‘That's just as well. I shouldn't get my poor hands wet. They're cut to pieces. It made things very awkward doing the washing. With Winifred gone, I suppose I shall have to do all the ironing.’
Once, this remark would have shocked me but by now I was used to it and comments like it and what we would now perhaps call ‘Cosway-speak’.
‘Do you want any shopping done?’ I asked. ‘I could go down to the village this afternoon, if you like.’
‘No, thanks. I can do it.’
‘It's no trouble, Ida.’ I was placating her and, by association, her mother; I knew it and despised myself for it, but that was the demoralizing effect they had on me. I had reached a stage when any scrap of kindness, when a word which wasn't actually rude, made me absurdly grateful. ‘I can go after lunch.’
She didn't bother to answer. ‘Mother is furious about your diary,’ she said. ‘She thinks you had no business to keep a diary while you were working for us.’
I picked up a handful of silver, the cloth and the napkins and went into the dining room to lay the table. Ella was there, apparently talking to some member of the staff at the White Rose. I heard her say, ‘You are giving him my messages, aren't you?’ The reply must have been short and sharp for she had flushed when she put down the receiver.
I had to say something. ‘No luck?’
‘That girl is very impertinent. I think I shall go out of my mind, Kerstin. You needn't lay a place for me. I couldn't eat a thing. Have you noticed what a lot of weight I've lost?’
