A Death in Two Parts

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  “Not this, it wouldn’t.” But she paused to take the bread Patience passed her and crumble it into the thick soup. “It’s ace,” she said after a few more mouthfuls. “You didn’t buy this from Tesco.”

  “No, I made it. Have some more.”

  “Please.” She passed over her empty bowl, and they ate for a while in silence, Patience battening down the questions until the time was right.

  “I’ve been off my head.” Veronica put down her spoon and looked across the table. “Round the bend. Nuts. Like it all happened so fast, when Mum got ill. After he died. Then the money stopped coming.” Her words were beginning to slur.

  “If you’ve been trying to sleep in that shed you must be dead on your feet,” Patience told her. “That’s probably enough to eat for now, and bed’s what you need. Come along, Veronica, things will look better in the morning.”

  “You’re not going to throw me out? Call the cops?”

  “Good God, no. What an idea! Come along now, your bed’s all ready.” She had to help Veronica to her feet and up the stairs, and wondered whether she should send for the doctor. But every instinct was against it. Young Dr Findlayson, like his father before him, was a very important link in the friendly chain of gossip that held Leyning together. Before he saw Veronica Crankshaw, they must have their story ready for him. “Sleep as long as you can.” She smiled from the doorway. “We’ll talk in the morning.”

  The doorbell rang while Patience was finishing the supper dishes. Well, this time there was likely to be someone there, and she had a pretty good idea who it would be. She took off her apron and made her leisurely way to the door. She was right. It was Mrs Vansittart, who lived across the road.

  “Oh, what a relief,” she said at the sight of Patience. “Forgive the intrusion, my dear, but to tell you the truth I was a little anxious about you. I happened to see you come back earlier on with a very odd-looking young person I’d seen hanging around. I really thought I ought to come and make sure you were all right.”

  “How very kind of you, Mrs Vansittart. And brave too, in the dark. I’m really grateful. But it’s quite all right, thank you. It’s a young friend of mine who has been having a bit of a bad time. Her mother died suddenly, and she seems to have gone off the rails a bit. I am so glad I ran into her; she’s resting now. I expect I’ll hear all about it when she feels better. Boyfriend problems, too, I imagine. You know how they are, the young.”

  “Oh dear me, yes. Always in one kind of trouble or other. How nice you have made the little house.” She was peering brightly round the hall. “Do you still have the drawing room upstairs?”

  “Yes, but I’m afraid I mustn’t take you up to see it tonight. I’ve just got Veronica off to bed and I don’t want to disturb her.”

  “Veronica. What a pretty name. And you are washing her clothes for her!” The machine had just gone into a new cycle. “Such a good hostess. I’m so very glad to find it is all for the best, my dear. You must come and see me very soon and tell me all about the poor young thing. Or bring her?”

  “How very kind of you.” Patience had learned over the years the technique of the gentle irrevocable movement towards the front door. “It was really good of you to come.” She meant it. It might have been inquisitive of the old lady, but it had also been brave.

  It was still only nine o’clock when the washing machine fell silent and Patience could hang the sad clothes on the airer in the utility room. There was no warmth in the shabby cotton skirt and shirt and the long grey cardigan was not much better. How in the world had Veronica managed to sleep at all in the shed? And how long had she been camping there? On the thought, she took a flashlight and went down the garden to look for signs of the secret occupation, half afraid of the sordid, smelly scene she might find.

  Nothing of the sort. The poor child must have been going clear down to the public loos at the station … How odd to be thinking of the unknown menace who had haunted her as a poor child. But that was clearly what she was. “Go very carefully,” Patience warned herself, wishing she had more experience of the young.

  She stood for a moment, looking up at the stars, finding her garden friendly again, the unknown threat gone. But inevitably her thoughts moved on to Geoffrey and what she had learned about him. He had deceived her, basically, consistently and successfully. For how long?

  Did it matter? It was her mistake that she had stayed with him, without love, all those years. What a waste, she thought, what a terrible waste, and decided to stop dredging in the useless past and go to bed. Tomorrow there would be things to do, decisions to make.

  She picked a couple of bananas from the fruit bowl and left them on the small table outside the spare room door in case her guest should wake hungry in the night. Then she put herself to bed with the poems of U. A. Fanthorpe and soon fell asleep, braced, somehow, and comforted.

  In the morning the bananas had gone and there was no sound of life from the spare room. She went quietly downstairs, put on the kettle, got croissants out of the deep freeze, and fixed a grapefruit. Her own breakfast finished, she was sitting with her elbows on the table drinking coffee and reading the Independent when she heard movement from above. “Good morning! Could you eat a boiled egg?” she called up the stairs. “Your clothes aren’t quite dry yet, I’m afraid. Can you bear the caftan again for the time being?”

  “Sure. An egg would be super.” Veronica appeared at the top of the stairs, tousle-headed in the pyjamas Patience had lent her. “Thanks a million for the bananas. They saved my life. Like you!” She turned crimson and dived back into her room.

  She had a little colour this morning, Patience saw with pleasure when she joined her. “I hope you slept well. Eat your grapefruit while I boil your egg.” She had promised herself not to ask a single question until breakfast was over.

  Veronica was eyeing the cafetière. “Cool,” she said. “Real coffee like Mum made.”

  “Do you want to talk about her?” Breaking her resolve already, Patience poured and passed her guest a cup of coffee as she started on the grapefruit.

  “I think so.” She sipped coffee and smiled for the first time across the cup at Patience. “Super coffee.” And then, “What’s the matter?”

  “You’re so like your father …” The smile had all Geoffrey’s dangerous charm.

  “I know. I’m sorry.” She meant it. “Maybe if it hadn’t been for that I’d have bitten the bullet and gone to Mum’s people when she got ill. But she said no, over her dead body we went to them. And that’s what it came down to.” Her eyes met Patience’s, full of tears. “Then, it went so fast, once I made them take her into hospital—”

  “Made?”

  “The doctor kept talking about a virus … Like, he’d never seen Mum, didn’t know her, she didn’t get ill – that’s why I knew it was bad when she just stayed in bed, but you couldn’t tell him. He wouldn’t listen – well, he was busy, of course.”

  “They all are,” said Patience, silently passing egg and toast and refilling her cup.

  “Yes. So I went into the surgery and made a scene.” Patience could imagine it. “And then he came, and took her in, and scanned her, and she just curled up and died.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. Not for her. I think, like, she was glad to go, even if it hadn’t been for the pain. And they were super in the hospital, once they knew. Couldn’t have been kinder. To me too. But not much they could do afterwards. We didn’t have any friends, you see, Mum and I. She was always waiting around for him to come; didn’t want arrangements that got in the way. And we couldn’t talk about him; if you’re in a lie all the time you can’t have friends … What is it?”

  “It’s what he did to me too,” Patience said. “So, did you get in touch with her family after she died? Get them to help you?”

  “No way! If she hadn’t wanted them alive, I wasn’t going to have them come shoving in when she was gone. Besides, I was the problem, wasn’t I? Once she was gone they wer
en’t likely to be keen on the family bastard, were they? Coming crawling for help? No, thanks! The social services helped me, and the lawyer was kind, in his way, and I said my goodbyes alone, on a wet Thursday at the crematorium, with no flowers. And, like, all the time, I was getting angrier and angrier with you, making it all your fault we’d got into that mess. If you’d only divorced him he’d have married her; it would all have been different. But as you wouldn’t—”

  “Wouldn’t?” Patience interrupted her. “Veronica, he never asked me to. I knew nothing. I only wish I had.”

  “I see that now. I think I began to wonder when I got here, started watching you, saw what you were like. You weren’t a bit like he said.” She took a breath. “Poor Mum, she should have spotted it. From the picture in the paper. I found it after she died. She’d kept it. You were pretty when you were young, weren’t you? Bright-looking, neat. Not a fat slob with more money than was good for her.” Her imitation of her father’s voice sent a shiver down Patience’s spine.

  “Horrible.” She looked back down the long range of wasted years she had lived with Veronica’s treacherous father. “How old are you?”

  “Eighteen.” She took a steadying sip of coffee, aware, Patience thought, of what she was really being asked. “But it had been going on for years before me. Him and Mum. Like, I wrecked it for her. A menopause mistake. No way he wanted me. Told Mum to get rid of me. But she wouldn’t. She told me that and I believe her.”

  “I’m sure you are right to.” A better woman than me, thought Patience.

  “He kept away for a while, Mum said; gave her a bit more money and kept away. He never did like me. Didn’t pretend to. But then” – a flicker of a smile – “I hated him right back. Mum used to leave me with the neighbours mostly. When he came. She was quite different then, everything about her. I hated that too.”

  “She must have loved him very much,” said Patience.

  “Oh, she did. I see that now. That’s why she stood for it. Couldn’t help herself. Like, he was her life. And I spoiled it for her. She talked a bit, rambling, when she was dying. They let me sit with her all the time. Super, they were. I think there must have been a point when she really thought he was going to get rid of you … Sorry!” A quick, apologetic glance. “Marry her; adopt me. Then he saw me one time and saw how like him I looked. I’d have been a dead giveaway. And that was that. I reckon that was when the cancer started, but she never said a thing. Just let it go. I suppose she wanted to die, really.”

  “Hard on you.”

  “All my fault.”

  “No, Veronica. All his. How did they meet?” And then: “Sorry. Do you mind talking about it?”

  “Let’s get it over with. I can see you need to know the lot. It was way back, Suez time, Mum said. Some political do in Plymouth and he was speaking. Freemasons, or something. Mum’s dad was chair, like, and he took her along to the dinner after because her mother wasn’t well. It was love at first sight, Mum said. Both of them. No question. She was only seventeen. Younger than I am. He stayed on for a few days after the meeting. To be with her. You remember?” She had seen something in Patience’s face.

  “Yes, I remember. He rang to say he thought there was a chance of the seat there. He’d stay a bit and go for it. We’d been married five years then.” She swallowed. She owed the truth in exchange. “I was well and truly out of love with him by then, if I’d ever been in. Knew it had all been an appalling mistake. I’ll tell you about it some time. Perhaps. But I was sure he still loved me. Needed me. My mistake. So it had gone on for years before you were born?”

  “Yes. She lived for him, waited for him; he fouled up everything for her. She didn’t talk about it much. She always tried so hard to find excuses. But that’s what it came down to. For a while she did all the usual things. Left school, you know, did a cordon bleu cookery course, shared a flat with two other girls. And had offers of course.”

  “And turned them down?”

  “And turned them down. From what she said, I think he always managed to turn up just in time, when she was beginning to get interested in someone else. And that was that. I’m sorry.” She looked across the table at Patience. “Should I be telling you this?”

  “Of course you should. I was just thinking about all the times he said he had urgent, sudden political business. And vanished. We didn’t talk politics much, after Suez,” she explained, and saw that it did not mean anything to Veronica. “I should have guessed,” she said sadly. “Found out. Done something.”

  “Christ, don’t you start blaming yourself too! That’s what Mum always did. Said it was all her fault. Bloody nonsense.”

  “Maybe,” said Patience, “But easier that way, somehow. You see, Veronica, you must understand: I was glad when he went away. I was happier without him.”

  “And you never did anything about it? But that’s gruesome.”

  “I know. I’m ashamed. I’ve only lived half a life, and it’s been my own fault.”

  “Oh, fuck ‘fault’!” said Veronica. And then: “Sorry! I’ll try not to.” She giggled. “You looked just like Mother Serena,” she said. “At the convent … Mum sent me to her old school to get me out of the way,” she explained. “He was glad to pay for that.” Something about Patience’s silence alerted her. “Was it your money – you paying? All the time? Didn’t you notice?”

  “No. I’m ashamed of that too. But I never thought not to trust him, you see.”

  “A mistake.”

  “Yes. So, you’re a Catholic?”

  “Was. School cured me of that. And the way Mum’s parents behaved to her. Not much bloody Christianity about that. Oh, sorry, I will try not to. What shall I say? ‘Basingstoke’?”

  “Or ‘By our Lady’,” Patience suggested. She looked at the kitchen clock. “We’re wasting time. We’ve got to get a story together before the neighbours start calling to make sure you haven’t mugged me in the night.”

  “What?”

  “You must have lived in a small town at some point?”

  “Yes. St Ives. I grew up there. Mum modelled a bit.”

  “Well, then, you know how news travels. My neighbour across the road saw us come back last night. She sits in her front window. She dropped in after you’d gone to bed to make sure I was OK. Nice of her really. I said you were a young friend, in trouble. She’ll be back.”

  “Course she will. True enough about the trouble, but decent of you to say ‘friend’.”

  “More than that, I hope.” Her mind had been racing, behind the scenes of this extraordinary conversation, and now she found that it had made itself up. “You are going to stay with me, aren’t you, Veronica? Let me look after you? The only thing that I keep wondering is how many people are going to notice just how like Geoffrey you look. Because everyone knows him in Leyning, of course. So who in the world are we going to say you are?”

  “I don’t understand.” She picked up a cold croissant and nibbled it absent-mindedly, dropping crumbs on the table, her eyes fixed on Patience. Asking something?

  “Well, I can’t exactly say, ‘This is a daughter I didn’t know I had’, can I, though I’d like to.” She reached across the table to grasp Veronica’s hand. “You are going to let me adopt you, Veronica?”

  “What?” She put down her coffee cup, stared across the table. “You’re raving—”

  “I’m not, you know.” Patience swallowed a lump in her throat. “I don’t believe in God, worse luck, but if I did, I’d think I was being given a second chance. I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told a soul. I started a baby, quite early on, with Geoffrey. Oh, I still remember how pleased I was. Until I told him. He made me get rid of it.”

  “And you did?”

  “Yes. Your mother was a better woman than I am. I’ve never forgiven myself. Or him. It was the end of the marriage, really, so far as I was concerned. I hated him touching me after that, but he never noticed. He wasn’t a noticing man. What I’m saying, Veronica, is that the
re was nothing of him for your mother to take away from me. I’d lost him already. And the baby.”

  “But for Christ’s sake, why didn’t you leave him?”

  “You may well ask. But, remember, it wasn’t so easy then. And I still believed in his career – just as your mother did. He was a very convincing man. Back when it happened, long before Suez, I really thought he was going to do some good in the world. It was my job to back him. It’s a long story, Veronica, and I’ll probably tell it you one day, but I did owe him a great deal. And I truly thought he needed me. If he’d only told me about your mother, and you, I’d have divorced him like a shot. I’d even have let him divorce me. So, you see, it’s all my fault … No, please don’t say it! I hate that word.”

  “Right,” said Veronica. “But just the same, let’s not fool around wondering whose fault it all is. Except his. I say, what am I going to call you?”

  “Oh, Patience, please. I’m not mad about the rest of it. And you? You said you should be Crankshaw?”

  “He wouldn’t let Mum name him as father. So I’ve her name, Lavolle, but of course it made her people madder at her than ever. That’s why she moved to St Ives in the end, to get clear the other side of the county from them. It was better there, she said, right from the start. She’d got away from the county grapevine and was just Mrs Lavolle with a baby and no husband. And she was lovely, Mum; all the artist crowd there liked to use her as a model, and they let her bring me along. There’s a picture of me in the Tate there only you wouldn’t recognise me, of course, it being an abstract.”

  “So you went to school there?”

  “Primary school, yes. I loved it. Friends all over town, walking to school together, going home to tea, even spending the night, times Mum wanted to get rid of me. It was when I started to grow up and wise up that she packed me off to the nuns. They thought it was their Christian duty to have me, see, and, boy, did they let me know it. And my clothes were all wrong – charity shops! – and I didn’t go skiing at Christmas … I’d have run away if there’d been anywhere to run to. It’s not nice, knowing your mum doesn’t want you at home. But I stuck it out and got my GCSEs. Like, I’m not stupid, though I wouldn’t blame you for thinking so; and then he died, and Mum got ill, and I just dropped out. Fair’s fair: the nuns did write and offer me a schol after Mum died and the money stopped coming. I’d have laughed if I hadn’t been crying. They wanted my A level results, see, for their bloody league tables.”