‘My husband is on his way,’ Nadine said. Mrs Joyce nodded, and went. Nadine did not want the doctor. If the doctor came it would be true.
Nadine couldn’t even put the baby down for long enough to make a proper sling to carry her in. She just sort of pulled at the cloth, wedging it in order to be able to tie it. In the end the baby was slung across her chest like a peasant child, or a foreign one. She did not want her to be unheld even for a moment. She did not want her to be alone in any way.
The fire was burning now, stuttering and breathing. Nadine stood, pushing herself up, though the child weighed practically nothing. She went to the French windows. The tableau was unchanged: lawn, the slope, the two figures at the end. She could see the tiny orange dot of Peter’s cigarette. It was impossible.
For a moment she wanted to rush out and check. Perhaps they were just having some astonishing picnic.
*
The hall clock had struck nine when the doorbell went. Not Mrs Joyce; she had only gone fifteen minutes before; she had a key and would come in round the back. Not Riley – too soon. Nadine felt a flash of panic. Who? What could she say? What if they called the police or tried to take Julia away? She thought about hiding until they left.
Shuffling outside, and a cough. Dr Tayle.
Of course he’d make a routine visit.
Well.
Nadine let him in. He said obvious things. ‘Ah, giving Mother a rest, are we? Good, good. And how is our new arrival?’
What am I to say to him? Her nursing experience was giving her nothing. Of all the things she had dealt with, that she had not been equipped to deal with … but that was meant to be over there. Not here. And not now. It’s meant to be over.
The doctor was making for the stairs.
‘Please wait in the study, doctor,’ she said, and her voice sounded all wrong to her. He went in, a little puzzled, but not very. Nadine went and sat at the kitchen table, and thought: When is this going to be over? Her tea stood cold on the hall table by the telephone.
Then she went back to the doctor, wishing he were a thousand miles away, and that he would leave them alone. But she couldn’t ask him to go. She understood that. It would be wrong. Reality, of its nature, was going to intrude.
‘Mrs Locke is in the garden,’ Nadine said. ‘Perhaps you’d follow me.’
He followed her, huffing surprise and disapproval. ‘She should be in bed! She needs to rest! Far too cold to be up and about outside, really …’
But then he caught sight of the mad tableau at the end of the lawn, and the sight propelled him forward, urgency catching at him like a flurry of wind at a dead leaf.
Peter glanced up as the doctor blew towards him. Said nothing. Nadine, following, stood back.
Dr Tayle was saying, ‘What – what – we must get her indoors. We must get her indoors.’ He let out a little grunt as he collapsed to kneel at her side. ‘Come on, man. Help me. Take her feet.’
Peter drew on his cigarette, and closed his eyes, and said, sadly, ‘Oh come, come, Doctor. This is a perfectly good place to be dead …’ And then the doctor leaned back, and turned grey, and seemed suddenly as much at a loss as everybody else.
Nadine thought: If she were in her bed, it would be completely different. It would be a tragedy but now it is a farce as well. Or … She went to where Peter sat, and knelt down with him, his bloodied coat, his cold white hands. She laid her fingers on his arm.
‘What happened here?’ Dr Tayle was saying. ‘Major Locke …’
Peter let him look at Julia. He stared at the doctor like a dog all the while he took her nonexistent pulse, felt her dead belly, looked at the spread and amount of blood. He would not let him move her. Dr Tayle tried to persuade him, mentioned decency and things like that. There was a horrible moment when the doctor’s sense of propriety seemed to overcome him, and he took hold of Julia’s shoulders, and seemed to be about to try to pull her up and carry her himself, and Peter roared. Nadine feared some horrid foolish physical squabble was about to break out over the body, pulling and grabbing – but the doctor backed down. He took a vast handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his brow.
‘Major Locke,’ he said, ‘you know it’s a criminal offence to prevent burial of a body?’
And Peter smiled and replied mildly, ‘Well, she’s only been a body for a few hours. Is there not a transition period, during which she can still be my wife, while I get used to the idea that she is my dead wife and once again the corpses rule?’
The doctor said, ‘You need to come inside too, Major Locke. It’s too cold out here.’ But that was nothing new to Peter. He stared until the doctor finally turned away.
Inside, Dr Tayle wanted to see the bedroom. He followed the trail up, and down again. Nadine put a log on the fire in the drawing room, cuddled Kitty close, and left him to it. It occurred to her, as she tended the fire, that the wild smearings on Peter’s face were not tears and mud, but ash.
Dr Tayle came back down. He seemed lost – to be looking around for a man to speak to, some other head-of-the-household figure. There being none, he spoke to Nadine. ‘I believe it was a haemorrhage. Alas. It’s not unusual, God preserve us – women die like that all too often, God preserve us. There needs to be a proper examination and under the circumstances another doctor should – see her – but nothing could have been done. Nothing could be done. There’s no sign of anything other than haemorrhage.’
Relief?
‘But it’s not my decision.’
Ah.
‘And the police must be informed.’
Silence. Her heart pounded strong and her thought was simple: No.
Why? Because you think he could have?
‘But there’s no wound?’ she said quietly, after a moment.
‘Would you have expected it?’ he said, frowning, looking at her. He said it very carefully. Each of them knew that the other was thinking: Peter was strange last night.
‘Not at all,’ she said.
‘I saw no sign of any wound,’ he said. ‘I was not able to give a full examination. But I do not expect to find any wound. If that is of any comfort. But procedures must be followed. And it is unusual that she should be in the garden.’
She said thank you, not knowing what else to say.
‘And you, Mrs Purefoy?’
‘I’m all right,’ she lied. Half left. ‘Shocked.’ She let go a huge sigh. ‘Shocked.’ Do babies feel the shock of the person in whose arms they are? She’s so near my heart …
‘You were a nursing member of the VAD, weren’t you?’ Dr Tayle was saying. ‘Do you feel capable of dealing with the situation, for the moment?’
She did, and said so, but the doctor did not want to leave her. He seemed indecisive. Flustered, almost.
‘Have a cup of tea, doctor,’ she said. ‘Or a glass of sherry. It’s a terrible shock for everybody.’
He nodded.
‘It must be best to leave them for now,’ she said. ‘My husband is on his way, and will speak to Peter. Mrs Joyce has taken Tom into town.’ Was she repeating herself? ‘No upset is required,’ she said. ‘Please allow my husband to speak to the police later if he thinks it necessary. There is not the slightest danger.’ She fixed her eyes on the doctor’s quite firmly. No lunatic specialists, no policemen, were going to barge in here to upset Tom and shred Peter even further, just because he needed to sit with his dead wife in the garden.
It had all been perfectly usual. Nothing. The only oddness was that they were outside. Had she gone there? Run there in panic? Had Peter taken her?
It’s very odd. All of it. Oddest of all that a person could just die, of nothing. And that another person could take her poor body out into the garden and lie it there. And just sit. That too is so odd. Is that what happened?
‘He was upset and he carried her body outside. That’s all,’ she said. ‘Give him a little peace.’ And in that moment she knew that if he did not, she herself would explode in some way; would hit him or shriek or make some wild accusa
tion that would see him removed – He has to leave now.
‘Are we agreed?’ she said.
The doctor left. He said he would be back in a few hours.
*
Peter sat out there, and time suspended. He accepted nothing, not even a cup of tea.
After standing at the French windows for half an hour, staring at him, Nadine had a realisation. Julia’s words came back to her: none of us can do this on our own.
She went over to the sideboard and poured two large whiskies. She put on several coats, Kitty tucked inside the layers, then picked up the glasses, and just went and stood on the lawn beside them. She was not going to just look at them through glass in their odd tableau: Julia like Ophelia, her little white foot poking out on the icy grass, the lace on the clean nightgown they had given her after the birth spread at the cuff and throat like frozen sea surf on the lawn, and at the hem like rotting, frothing weed; Peter, sitting, in his heavy coat, smoking, one knee up, one leg out – with all the lazy elegance of a soldier on a war memorial, ruined, beautiful, his long hands fluttering in the dull winter light as he lit cigarette after cigarette. She belonged with them.
*
He was whispering.
She squatted down beside him to hear.
He looked up at her, his eyes so pale and so cold.
‘I suppose I killed her?’ he said, very very quietly.
‘No!’ she said. ‘No, you didn’t!’
His eyes were disbelieving.
‘Go away,’ he said.
‘No,’ she said, gently.
She took up her previous post.
*
She was still standing there when she felt Riley’s hand on her shoulder, his arm around her. ‘Go inside,’ he said. ‘You’re cold. Make me a cup of tea, would you?’
‘Have you told Rose?’ Nadine whispered, as he unfroze her with his touch.
‘She’s on her way,’ he said. ‘Go on. Go in.’
I love you.
*
Tom and Eliza were making up the fire in Peter’s study (view to the north, other side of the house from the lawn). He handed her logs, with due awareness of his own importance.
‘I put the dog in the shed,’ Mrs Joyce said, and indeed now she mentioned it, Nadine recalled hearing some low howling.
‘Riley is here,’ said Nadine. ‘So I am going to make some tea. Tom, will you come and help me?’
The baby was still tucked into her shawl. Nadine wanted to know where everybody was. That they were all right. Though they weren’t.
Mrs Joyce looked questioning.
‘Riley is here,’ Nadine said again, as if that answered all questions. Then, ‘Where is Millie?’
‘Upstairs,’ said Mrs Joyce. ‘I told her Mrs Locke has – had an accident. She’s upset. Best thing. Out of the way.’
‘And the maternity nurse? Was she not asked for for today?’
‘Yes, Mrs Purefoy, we expected her this morning.’
‘Can you speak to her? I will, if you wish.’
‘Between us we’ll do, Mrs Purefoy.’
‘We will. Thank you, Mrs Joyce. Oh! Harker?’
‘He wanted to chop some more firewood,’ Mrs Joyce said. Their eyes met and for the first time Nadine felt that she would cry.
She went and put the kettle on the hob. There were the arrowroot biscuits. She took one from the tin with the picture of the rocking horse on the lid, and gave it to Tom, and her eyes settled on him.
Do I wait for Peter to tell this boy his mother is dead? Will Peter be able to?
Do I have to tell him?
Do I tell him now?
Riley had told her a phrase of Peter’s, about children knowing nothing of innocence; of how you only recognise it when it leaves you. Eliza had put Tom in his sailor suit, and he looked absurdly sweet.
Is he going to hate his sister now? Will he see her as his mother’s murderer? Or his father? If … is there any way out of this?
She was suddenly lividly angry. It had been going to be all right! They had been smiling at each other! Things had been better! There’s this beautiful baby, oh, Christ …
She said to Tom, ‘Hop up on the table, sweetheart,’ and he did.
Rose could tell him!
She sat next to him.
‘We’re not normally allowed to sit on the table,’ he said.
‘Today’s not a normal day,’ she said.
‘Why?’ he asked.
‘It’s a very sad day.’
‘Why?’
She put her arm round him and realised she was holding him too tight.
‘Why?’
Damn it, Rose can do it. Rose is practically his aunt.
‘Is it Mummy and Daddy in the garden?’ he said, and for a moment it seemed her stomach slipped out of her body … This is where I slaughter innocence, she thought. This is where I watch it die.
All right, then …
She said, ‘Did you see them?’
‘I’m going to see them again,’ he said, and slipped off the table and started towards the drawing room.
‘No!’ she shouted, but then – but then.
Do we still do what is expected? What has always been done? Or what it might be better to do?
Do we look back, or forwards?
‘I’ll come with you,’ she said, and she took his hand.
*
They walked out together across the lawn, damp now and dull. Riley was sitting with Peter, both smoking. Riley was talking softly. When Tom dropped Nadine’s hand and trotted straight over to his mother, the men looked up, paralysed as it were, with surprise.
‘Tom!’ Riley exclaimed, and looked round, and Nadine was there, and Peter looked up and round, with one of his beautiful beatific smiles, his blue eyes light.
‘Poor Mummy,’ Tom said. ‘She’s got blood.’
‘Tom,’ Nadine said gently. ‘Darling,’ and she put herself close to him, and touched his arm.
‘Nadine!’ Riley said, and she made an arm-lifting what-could-I-do gesture, a gesture of I’m not in charge, I can’t prevent, I can’t control …
She knelt by Tom.
‘Is she asleep?’ he said, and Nadine took her breath, and looking at Peter, and then back to Tom, she said gently, ‘Darling, your mummy is dead.’ Peter blinked softly at her, his eyes kind.
‘Like the bullfinch?’ Tom said.
‘Yes.’
‘No more flying?’
‘No more nothing, darling. Her soul has gone to heaven.’
‘Where’s heaven?’
‘Somewhere we can’t go, until we die.’
‘But I want her.’
‘Sit with her now,’ said Nadine. ‘With your father. Sit with her and say goodbye. Then in a few days we will have a special sad party for her body, to say goodbye to it, and then her soul will go to heaven.’
‘I don’t want it to,’ Tom said, dry-eyed.
‘We have no choice, darling.’
Silence.
‘We have no choice,’ she said again.
Before anyone could say anything more, Tom burst through the vanguard of his father and Riley, jostling their coats and their knees and their adulthood, and flung himself to the ground. He patted his mother’s hair, kissed her cheek. ‘She’s too cold!’ he said, angrily – and at just that moment, a noise behind them – it was Rose, a Gladstone bag dropped on the terrace, rushing down the lawn.
Tom jumped up. ‘Rose!’ he shouted. ‘They’re going to put Mummy in a hole in the ground like the bullfinch and I don’t want them to!’ – and Rose was weeping and weeping, floods of tears.
Tom stared at the ground. All around him were the dead matches of the men’s cigarettes.
‘For God’s sake, get him out of here!’ Peter shouted. ‘Everybody just go away!’
Chapter Nineteen
Locke Hill and London, December 1919
There followed a period of confusion which afterwards none of them could recall clearly. Rose’s furious deter
mination to get Peter inside. Riley’s quiet conviction that he should be left alone. Nadine’s desire to take Tom and Kitty away. Tom’s equally profound desire to lie down by his mother and make her wake up. Kitty waking, finally, and mewling like a bird inside Nadine’s shawl. Peter sitting, smoking, ignoring it all, looking at Julia. Julia lying there.
Rose finally said everyone should go away and leave her with her cousin. Riley picked Tom up, kicking and yelling, and held him very close and tight and safe as he carried him up the lawn. Very soon Tom subsided, and Riley put his hand over the back of the boy’s head as he sobbed against his shoulder. Nadine walked beside them, her hand gently on her husband’s back.
So then Rose could go and sit across from Peter, and call his name gently.
He looked up, his eyelids drooping, exhausted.
She had been going to speak softly to him, to be kind and strong and sensible, but she didn’t. She just wept. How utterly she had failed them both. How utterly. After all. The moment I leave. As soon as I made the break – and look at us now.
After a while he held his hand out to her, and she took it.
‘I killed her,’ he said.
‘I don’t think you did,’ she said.
‘I thought I did,’ he said.
‘I don’t think so.’
They were too far apart to hold hands for long, arms stretched out. They let them drop.
‘Go on in,’ he said, and she looked at him, and she went.
She spent the next fifteen minutes in her room, howling: for him, for Julia, for everything. Among the things she howled for was the fact that now she could never leave him. She would now stay here for ever, looking after him and the children. The future she had imagined was exploding in her face. She didn’t berate herself for having dared to imagine a different life, a free life – her own life. She just recognised the truth. The woman is needed by the man – the sick man – and the children. Goodbye, medicine. Goodbye, independence.
Then she went back out to sit with him some more.
*
The maternity nurse, Harding, had arrived, young, cheerful, appalled, calm. Eliza had said she was very sorry but … and run away. Millie was in the kitchen, crying. Harker had retreated to his room, and came out only to speak occasionally in a low voice with Mrs Joyce. Peter was still in the garden. Riley was talking to someone on the telephone. Rose had come in again and kept swallowing and walking round in circles, her chest heaving quick and shallow. Nadine wished she would sit down, or go and rest. For herself, Nadine just wanted to lie down with Riley and the baby and weep.
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