Sweetheart, Sweetheart

by Bernard Taylor

  “I thought I knew, but now I’m beginning to think I don’t know anything at all.”

  My arm was finished. He lightly covered it, secured the dressing with tape and began to put his instruments to one side. “How does it feel?” he asked.

  “Fine . . .” I paused. “Perhaps there’s something you can tell me . . .”

  “What’s that?”

  “Why is it that the people I’ve talked to are so—evasive? The sexton, Jean Timpson, you . . . As soon as I start to ask questions I get the devil’s own job getting an answer. Why is that? Is there something I shouldn’t know?”

  He had begun to wash his hands. “Look,” he said, “you’re going back to New York tomorrow. In a few days, weeks this will all be behind you, and you’ll be able to view it all more—rationally . . .”

  “See, there you go again. I can’t get a simple answer to a simple question.”

  “Questions.” He gave a slight shake of his head. “Why don’t you leave it alone. Your brother and his wife are at peace now. I know that sounds very sentimental, but it’s true. Whatever troubles they had are over. Can’t you leave it like that? Your questions won’t help them now. And they certainly won’t help you.”

  “There are things I want to know,” I said. “Helen was in a pretty bad way before she died—and I want to know why. According to Jean Timpson, Helen wasn’t in a fit state to be left on her own. And another thing—my brother removed every single photograph of her.”

  “That doesn’t really surprise me. I know he was knocked sideways by her death.”

  “He removed them before she died.”

  He said nothing to this, just looked at me for a moment then turned away, reaching for a towel. I watched him as he dried his hands. Very methodical.

  “Why?” I said. “That’s what I’d like to know. What had she done to make him behave in such a way? You were treating her. You must know something.”

  He hung up the towel. I asked, as the silence continued:

  “Did you know Mrs. Barton?”

  “. . . She’s just a woman who used to live here in the village.”

  “Is that all you can tell me? I know more than that. I know that she was there at the cottage on the night Helen died.”

  “It’s no secret,” he said. “What else do you want to know about her? She’s a widow. First name Elizabeth . . .”

  Elizabeth. I thought of the E on Colin’s­ birthday card.

  “She lives in London now, so I’m told,” I said.

  “Yes, but I don’t know where.”

  “That’s all right. I’m sure her address will be at the cottage . . .” I had already decided I must write to her. I had to contact—even if it was only by letter—someone who had been close to Colin and Helen. “I’ll get in touch with her,” I said.

  He gave the slightest nod—which told me nothing at all.

  “Helen was already living with a man when she met my brother,” I said, “Did you know him?”

  “Well, Alan De Freyne was certainly living at the cottage. I don’t know about living with her.”

  “Did you know him?”

  “Yes. He was a patient of mine. I knew him fairly well. Good-looking, fair-haired man. About forty . . . He was a painter also, I believe.” He looked at me obliquely. “Why are you asking about him? He wasn’t even here at the time any of this—the—business—happened . . .”

  I shrugged. “Even so, I want to get in touch with him.”

  “I don’t see how it would help you. I told you—he’d gone.” When I said nothing he added, “Ages ago. As a matter of fact I can tell you the exact day. I can remember because it was my wife’s birthday, the 28th of April.” He reached up to a shelf and took down a large desk diary with last year’s date on it. “I was taking her out for the evening, and Alan De Freyne hadn’t turned up for his appointment . . .” He was riffling through the pages. “I didn’t want to waste any more time so I phoned your house to see what had happened. Your brother answered. When I asked where De Freyne was your brother said he had left—gone from the village that morning.” He prodded the page before him. “There it is, yes. His appointment was for six-fifteen—my last one of the evening.

  “28th of April,” I said, “that was only about four or five days before Colin and Helen were married. Why would De Freyne leave so suddenly—just then?”

  Reese shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. I was damned annoyed because he hadn’t bothered to let me know, but had just left me sitting here. Still,” he put the diary back on the shelf, “I shouldn’t think your brother was much put out.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  He hesitated. “I don’t believe they got on very well together.”

  “Go on . . .”

  “I know they didn’t. Only the week before that they had a bit of a bust up.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “De Freyne told me.” He paused, shrugged. “I don’t see why I shouldn’t tell you. I was treating De Freyne—just for some minor disorder—and when he came round to see me he had a split lip and a bruised eye. I asked him how it had happened, and he said he’d had a fight with your brother.”

  “. . . Did he say what about?”

  “I didn’t ask him.” He frowned. “Look, I wouldn’t go reading too much into it all.”

  “How can I not read anything into it? Up till recently I thought Colin and Helen had been totally happy together.”

  “The fight was with De Freyne,” he said dryly, “not Helen.”

  “But De Freyne had been living there with them, so of course Helen was involved. Bound to be.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “Anyway, I shall find out. As soon as I know where he is I shall write to him.”

  “Why? What good will it do to start chasing after him and Elizabeth Barton? What can you hope to gain?”

  “A bit of peace of mind.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Then I’ll tell you.”

  And I did. God knows why, but I did. I told him about the phone call. “Whoever it was,” I said, “he thought I was Colin. And he believes that Colin was responsible for Helen’s death. That he killed her . . . for her money.”

  Reese was very quiet as I talked. When I’d finished he waited for a moment, then said:

  “But you know that’s not true.”

  “Of course I know it’s not true.” I put my head in my hands. “God—I just don’t know what to do.”

  “Nothing. Do nothing. It was just some crank, that’s all. The world’s full of them. Forget it.”

  “How can I. I can’t.”

  He sighed and shook his head. “That’s the trouble,” he said, “you begin by knowing just a bit of the story, just a few of the facts, and you start writing the ending yourself. A few questions about Alan De Freyne and Elizabeth Barton, then one crank’s phone call and you’ve already built a saga out of nothing.”

  “Hardly nothing. If it’s enough to make people talk. And you said yourself there’s been talk—rumours.”

  “Well . . . yes . . .”

  “About Colin.”

  He nodded reluctantly.

  “What are they saying about him?” I asked. “The same as in that phone call?”

  “No, no, no . . .”

  I didn’t believe him. “What then?” I said. “Something to do with him and Elizabeth Barton?”

  His silence told me I was right.

  “So that’s it. They’re saying that he and this woman were having a bit of a fling together.”

  He said, with the slightest touch of defensiveness: “She’s a young, attractive woman. You don’t think that escapes people’s notice, do you?”

  “And are they still saying all this?”

  “No, not now.” He shook his head. “You’d be surprised—people can be amazingly generous and well-thinking of the dead.”

  “But they did think that. That’s the point.”

  “People sa
y and think and do all kinds of things. But that doesn’t mean any of it has to be right.”

  In my mind I was back on the phone call again. The man had clearly implied that Colin had killed Helen for her money and now, here, I had come up with an additional motive. Elizabeth Barton. I sat there, staring down at the table. “What do you think about it?” I said at last.

  “I don’t think about it. Look, I’m a doctor, and I just do—or try to do—a doctor’s job. And at the risk of sounding sickeningly pious in the extreme, that job is to help and not hinder.”

  “But they’re all so wrong,” I said. “He loved Helen. I know it. His letters . . . he couldn’t fool me like that. He loved her. They loved each other.”

  “Good. Then just hang on to that. If you believe that then you have no need to go on torturing yourself with all these speculations.”

  Although I didn’t look at him I felt his eyes on me in the silence that followed. Then he said:

  “There was an inquest. You know that. And a verdict of misadventure.”

  “I’m not talking about the inquest,” I said. “I’m talking about what the villagers have been talking about. What they think. And they think Colin killed her. That’s it, isn’t it?”

  Without giving him time to say anything else I picked up my jacket and walked from the room.

  9

  Outside in the square I stood still, at a loss. Why had I over-­reacted so? After a while I turned and walked away, in the direction of the churchyard.

  Amongst the graves I wandered about, looking at the carved headstones, reading the inscriptions there. All those names, all those dates, all those monuments to grief, love, memories, self-pity, guilt . . .

  I looked at the tended graves with their fresh flowers and weed-free earth. I looked at the forgotten ones where the headstones had tilted over the years, and where the encroaching grass and weeds said there’d be no more roses, no more daffodils, and where the creeping moss and lichen all but obliterated the carved lettering.

  It told such sad tales of life, that place. And the illustrations were everywhere. From the tiny, throat-catching graves of the children: Simon. Aged six. Into Thy Hands O Lord (with daisies, fading)—to the dusty plastic tulips, to the empty, overturned rusting pot, to the carved child-angel with her texture like soap who bent her head, gently smiling in her vigil of everlasting prayer . . .

  There I saw some of the Gerrard graves, adults and children. They were among the forgotten, the writing on their stones eroded by the years, but still readable. I found the grave, too, of the last of them: Bronwen Denise Temple. Born 1867. Departed this life August 1902. Only a few yards away I found the grave of Margaret Lane, the sampler-maker. Another forgotten one—laid to rest at the age of twenty-five. She lay beside her husband, John. He had survived her by only four years. I thought again of sad Margaret burning up in the summer-house—and then again of the melancholy words of the poem she had so delicately sewn,

  I shall sing when night’s decay

  Ushers in a drearier day.

  —and wondered at a young girl being so concerned with thoughts of death. But why should I wonder?—it was nothing new. And certainly Emily Brontë herself hadn’t exactly been what you’d call a laugh a minute.

  At the side of the path I found a seat and sat there smoking one cigarette after another while the evening grew mellower. I thought of Jean Timpson’s tears as we’d stood on the lawn while the blackbird had sung on unconcerned. I thought about all that Reese had said to me—and what he hadn’t said. And through it all one thing was becoming abundantly clear: my brother’s marriage was appearing less and less idyllic all the time. I had insisted to Reese that Colin and Helen had truly loved each other. And now I could only wonder whether they had ever loved each other at all . . . Not only was there all that business with Alan De Freyne, ending with the fight and De Freyne’s sudden departure; I had also the knowledge that Colin’s­ relationship with Elizabeth Barton had caused gossip in the village. And, it was certain, the talk had not stopped at that . . .

  After a long, long time I got up, left the path and picked my way slowly between the graves to that other one.

  I stayed there for ages, it seemed, leaning on the nearby cemetery wall, aware of the silence, the stillness all around me. In the strengthening moonlight the gravestones merged into a general pale luminosity, relieved only here and there where the moon’s light was directly reflected. Colin and Helen’s grave, without a stone, was only a dark shadowy mound from where I stood.

  “You should have a stone,” I whispered to my brother. “You must. You shall.”

  He does have a stone now. It’s simple, but it’s enough. And next year the flowers won’t have to be placed in pots; the ones I’ve planted will be growing, from the earth—from him, from them, in a way.

  And I shall plant more flowers. I haven’t decided which, though. It’s something I’ll have to think about. I could plant some roses, I guess, but I’m not sure whether that’d be right; whether she’d like them. Ah, well, it’ll come to me. There’s time and, after all, Rome wasn’t built in a day. It’s just that now the earth still looks rather bare with only the cornflowers in the glass vase. It looks so new still, the grave. The flowers are new, the earth looks newly turned (as it is), and the stone is new. The stone is very new, and the lettering on the stone looks the newest thing of all. All that precise chiselling; so sharp, so clean.

  On the other stone I can see a spider, quite small, climbing up the edge. He doesn’t really climb; he just walks. He accepts being there; doesn’t find the newness off-putting . . . I turn over to lie on my back and move my head to watch his progress. After leaving the edge of the stone he begins to walk over the face of it, across Beloved Wife of onto her name, moving first to the H and then the E, and stopping, resting in the groove of the L. There is a little shade there in that little groove. And it’s a hot day.

  At the foot of Gerrard’s Hill I saw in the dimness the figure of Jean Timpson coming towards me. As she drew near she put her head on one side and gave me her shy, eye-avoiding smile. I smiled back.

  “Good evening,” I said.

  “Good evening.” She shifted her basket from one hand to the other. “I just thought I’d look in . . .” She nodded back in the direction of the cottage. “. . . Just to see how you were—if you needed anything . . .”

  “I’m okay, thank you.”

  “. . . What happened about your arm?”

  “Eight stitches.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “It feels all right.”

  She nodded, began to turn away. “Well, I’ll . . . get back home. Dad’ll be wondering where I am.”

  I said, stopping her, “You told me Mrs. Barton was with my brother at Helen’s funeral.”

  “ . . . Yes.”

  “And my brother’s funeral . . . did she come to that?”

  “No.”

  “But they were good friends . . .”

  “She wasn’t there. I was there and I didn’t see her. The last thing I saw of her was on that—that last night.”

  “Which last night . . . ?”

  She fiddled with the handle of her basket, shifted her feet.

  “Which last night?” I repeated.

  “The night he died.”

  “She was here then?”

  A nod in answer, lips set.

  “But you said you hadn’t been up to the cottage. So how do you know?”

  She turned, pointing up the hill. “Behind those trees opposite the cottage there’s a little clearing—hidden from the road. I can see it from my bedroom window.”

  “. . . Yes?”

  “She was there that night. I saw her car parked there.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “Positive.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Close on ten o’clock.”

  I went to speak but she answered my question before I could ask it.

  “And it was still ther
e at eleven, too.”

  I waited. After a moment she went on:

  “See, that was the time I heard the bang. Of course it was only later that I realised what it was—the car crashing. I didn’t know at the time. I’d gone to bed early—and the noise woke me up. I got up and looked out. I thought perhaps I’d imagined the noise. I could see her car still there; it was very bright moonlight.”

  “The ambulance wasn’t called until nearly two hours later,” I said. “By a taxi-driver. If Mrs. Barton was there—as you say—then why didn’t she do something?”

  Jean Timpson shrugged. “Well . . . she was there all right.” Her face was in shadow as she dug her thumbnail into the weave of the basket-handle. She didn’t look up.

  “Does anyone else know she was there?”

  Another shrug.

  “Did you tell anyone?”

  “No.”

  “Didn’t you even tell them at the inquest?”

  “I wasn’t at the inquest. I wasn’t asked to go.”

  “But—but didn’t you feel you should have told—somebody?”

  “Wasn’t none of my business. Not really, was it?”

  “Wasn’t it?”

  “We keeps ourselves to ourselves, Dad and me . . .”

  I nodded. “So I guess you wouldn’t have heard anything in the village . . .”

  “Heard what?”

  “The talk. About my brother. About him and—Mrs. Barton . . .”

  She looked at the ground. Her voice came low with melancholy and old bitterness.

  “That would be like them. Talk, talk, talk. They don’t leave nobody alone.” She raised her head. “He didn’t do nothing. Nothing at all. I know.”

  The vehemence in her words moved me. I was grateful to her for her belief. I said, after a moment:

  “Perhaps there’s something you do know . . .”

  “What’s that?”

  “Where I can write to Alan De Freyne . . .”

  Even as I finished speaking I saw a hardness come into her face. “I don’t know,” she said, “—and I don’t want to.”

  I’d never seen her quite like that before. She was all controlled anger and hurt. I said hesitantly:

  “You sound as if you knew him—well . . .”