Death is a Word

by Hazel Holt

  Death is a Word

  HAZEL HOLT

  For all my readers, past and present,

  with love and gratitude

  Death is a word

  Not to be declined in any case.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Envoi

  About the Author

  By Hazel Holt

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  ‘So how was Eva?’

  ‘Upset, of course,’ Rosemary said, ‘but you know how she is, always cheerful and positive about things.’

  ‘It was so unfair,’ I continued, ‘just six months after he’d finally retired …’

  Eva’s husband, Alan Jackson, was a foreign correspondent, a familiar face on our television screens in exotic places, all too often with burning buildings and shellfire lighting up the darkness behind him.

  ‘Of course he should have retired years ago,’ Rosemary continued, ‘but there was always just one more job. Still, after all that Middle East stuff he promised Eva he’d call it a day.’

  ‘I really don’t know how she’s been able to live with it all these years.’

  ‘Well, she knew when she married him that’s how it would be. Goodness knows, the family tried to persuade her not to, but she always said she’d rather have that sort of life with Alan than a settled one with anybody else. She could have married Gerald, he was mad about her, and ended up as a judge’s wife, Lady Forsyth!’

  Eva Jackson is Rosemary’s cousin (‘umpteen times removed’) and she’s always been very fond of her. Indeed we all are. It’s difficult to describe her – lively, amusing, down to earth, clever without seeming clever, sympathetic, a good listener – I could go on. She’s simply Eva, a large woman in every sense. ‘I really ought to diet,’ she says ruefully, ‘but I never seem to have the time.’ Which is true. When she moved back to Taviscombe after Alan’s death, she was eagerly pounced on by the local charities always on the lookout for energetic volunteers. When we protested she said, ‘It does me good to keep busy.’

  It’s ironic that Alan, who had survived so many hazardous experiences – under crossfire in the Balkans, yomping with the marines in the Falklands, dodging snipers in Libya and interviewing Taliban warlords in the back of a Toyota truck, madly driving through the dust in Afghanistan – should have died in a London hospital of kidney failure. Eva had watched all these perils with a sort of stoicism.

  ‘I suppose,’ I said, ‘she understood all the dangers, being a journalist herself.’

  ‘Being a feature writer on a Sunday paper,’ Rosemary replied, ‘isn’t quite the same thing.’

  ‘Well she has done some investigative stuff.’

  ‘Checking on pharmaceutical companies and care homes isn’t really in the same league.’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘Anyway,’ Rosemary said, ‘she’s still got a garage full of unpacked boxes so I said I’d go round and help her sort them out. Mostly books and papers – she just unpacked the practical things she needed and left all the other stuff. A lot of it’s Alan’s and I don’t think she could face it right away.’

  ‘Easier with the two of you.’

  ‘Well, at least I can help her heave the boxes about.’

  When I saw Rosemary a day or two later, I asked how it had gone.

  ‘We did a bit, but it’s a mammoth task! Lots of Eva’s old articles, notes Alan made, maps and reports – masses of correspondence – I don’t believe either of them ever threw anything away. And hundreds of books. She’s going to need yards and yards of bookshelves.’

  ‘I’ll give Dave a ring, if you like, he did a lot of carpentry for Michael and Thea when they first moved into their house.’

  ‘Good idea. Actually, I thought she needed a bit of a break so I asked her to lunch tomorrow and I hope you’ll come too.’

  ‘Fine. I’d love to see Eva again, but I didn’t like to call or anything when she’s only just moved in.’

  ‘The friends down here from way back have all moved away, so I thought you and I might rally round.’

  Eva’s parents lived just outside Taviscombe and she was brought up here. Her father was an Australian, but his family originally came from Somerset. Apparently her grandfather quarrelled with his father way back, when he didn’t join up in the First World War because he was a pacifist. He (the young man) went to Australia, married there and, dramatically, never mentioned his family again, but his son, Eva’s father, did volunteer in 1945 and came to England to join the RAF. After the war, he came down to Exmoor to have a look at the place his family came from and decided that this was where he wanted to live. He married a local girl (from quite a well-off family) and, with their help, set up a small engineering factory which did very well and eventually made him a rich man in his own right. It always seemed to us a very romantic story and, as girls, we envied Eva for having such an unusual family.

  Eva was some years younger than Rosemary and me, but we took to her straight away. Rosemary, whose mothering instincts were very strong even then, took Eva under her wing and, even now, is very protective of her.

  Eva went to boarding school but spent her holidays at home, so Rosemary and I saw quite a bit of her when she was young. But, after Oxford, like so many of that generation, she was mad keen to go to London – where it was ‘all happening’ – and we saw her only infrequently, when she visited her parents or sometimes when we stayed with her in her chaotic flat in Bloomsbury near the British Museum, when we felt like a trip to London.

  It had been quite a while since I’d seen Eva. Rosemary and I had gone up to London for the funeral – a formal affair at St Bride’s off Fleet Street, with some well-known faces, broadcasters, politicians, other journalists – but, of course, it hadn’t been possible then to do more than murmur a few obvious words of sympathy.

  She was already there when I arrived, a glass of red wine in her hand, and Rosemary’s old boxer dog asleep with his head resting heavily on her feet. She waved her glass in greeting.

  ‘Sorry I can’t get up,’ she said smiling, ‘but Alpha here has got me pinned down. No’, she went on, as Rosemary made a move to remove him, ‘I like him there – it’s very comfortable.’

  I went over and gave her a hug. ‘Lovely to see you. How are you finding the cottage?’

  ‘Cosy, I think the word is. I thought it would be easier to manage after that large flat, but I do miss the space, there’s nowhere to put things. And, because I’m hopeless at packing I left it all to the removal men and, bless them, I’m sure they did a good job but they’ve packed everything, even some old pencils and rubber bands! I suppose it’s like computers, you give them an instruction and they take it literally!’

  ‘Oh dear. Rosemary tells me you need more bookshelves. I can recommend a good carpenter.’

  ‘That would be marvellous, that is, if he can find enough wall space. Another thing I’ve discovered about an eighteenth-century cottage is that none of the walls are straight, they sort of curve, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Only too well. No, Dave is quite used to that – he’s very good. I’ll give you his number.’

  ‘I suppose I ought to do a bit more sorting out
, I really haven’t any idea what I want to keep. As I said, they obviously emptied all the bookshelves and filing cabinets into boxes. It’s all a bit daunting. Rosemary’s been an angel and got me going – I’d really like to leave them there, in situ, and try and forget they ever existed. But it wouldn’t be fair to leave it all to Dan after I’ve gone.’

  Dan is Eva’s son, their only child, also a journalist, though also in another field; he’s a restaurant critic, well known for his acerbic comments on the page and on many television programmes.

  ‘How is Dan?’ I asked. ‘I loved his piece about that new place in Notting Hill – do they really serve the food on pieces of slate? It’s bad enough that practically everywhere you go the food comes in enormous soup plates!

  Eva laughed. ‘Oh, he’s off to do some sort of gastronomic tour of Spain. I think it’s for that food programme. I can’t keep up with him.’

  ‘Well,’ Rosemary said, ‘I’m glad he’s not here to comment on my little offering. Come along both of you, bring your glasses, lunch is ready.’

  The next time I saw Eva was at Brunswick Lodge, the cultural centre of Taviscombe as my friend Anthea, who runs the place, likes to describe it.

  ‘Oh, any subject at all – I’m sure whatever you choose will be fascinating,’ Anthea was saying.

  ‘Well, I’d love to, of course, but I do seem to have taken on rather a lot already …’

  ‘Oh, it doesn’t have to be anything formal, just a little chat, really, and I’m sure people would like to ask a few questions. After all,’ she continued, ‘we don’t often have the chance to hear about the life of a famous foreign correspondent, quite a celebrity. About an hour would be fine, a bit longer if there’s a lot of questions and, of course, if we could manage some sort of film—’

  ‘Sorry to interrupt, Anthea,’ I said, moving towards them, ‘but Rosemary needs to have a word with Eva. I think it’s urgent.’

  With the benefit of years of experience, I managed to extract Eva from Anthea’s clutches and take her into the kitchen where Rosemary was washing up after the coffee morning we had just been attending. She looked up enquiringly.

  ‘I thought she needed rescuing,’ I said. ‘Anthea is a bit full-on at the best of times and she’s really determined to pin down poor Eva.’

  ‘You’ll have to do it in the end,’ Rosemary said, wringing out the dishcloth. ‘But you really don’t need that now – especially,’ she said sternly, ‘with all that stuff in the garage.’

  ‘Perhaps I could help,’ I said. ‘An extra pair of hands.’

  ‘That would be marvellous,’ Eva said gratefully. ‘If you’re sure you can spare the time. I know I’ve got to do it; I just need energising.’

  ‘Right, then,’ Rosemary said briskly. ‘How about Wednesday?’

  Eva’s cottage, a few miles outside Taviscombe, is down a narrow lane with practically no passing places – you just pray you won’t meet anyone. It stands alone, set back a fair way from the road and is not, by any means, a pretty cottage. Although built of the local red sandstone, the thatched roof has long since been replaced by more utilitarian slates, which, with its tiny windows, gives it a bleaker look. Originally it had been two small cottages, built for agricultural workers in the days when farming was more labour intensive than it is today. Even so, it’s not very large and I could quite see what Eva meant about the lack of space.

  ‘Not a single cupboard in the place,’ she said as she showed me round, ‘except for the space under the stairs and that’s so dark you can’t see what’s in there.’

  Still, in spite of its unprepossessing exterior, the inside was unmistakeably Eva’s. The furniture seemed to have settled in comfortably and her possessions and the things that Alan had picked up in his travels gave it a familiar look.

  ‘How about some coffee?’ Eva asked.

  ‘Coffee afterwards,’ Rosemary said firmly. ‘I know you two – once you get settled there’s no moving you.’

  Eva led us out through the back door into a large garden, now largely run wild.

  ‘I really must get all this seen to,’ she said helplessly. ‘I simply don’t know about gardens. We always lived in flats – not even a window box.’

  ‘Sheila will help you there,’ Rosemary said. ‘Her gardener likes a challenge.’

  Eva’s garage wasn’t a garage per se, being a large stone building a little way from the house with a frontage onto the lane.

  ‘I think it must have been a woodshed or something,’ she said, fishing in her pocket for a key. ‘Oh, this wretched padlock – there, that’s done it. I know I should keep it locked up but, honestly, I can’t imagine anyone wanting to steal anything in here.’ She looked despairingly at the sealed boxes which filled the whole place. ‘There are times when I wish someone would.’

  ‘I think it was probably a cider house,’ I said, looking with interest at those bits of the walls I could see. ‘Too large for a woodshed. Still, being large is good – you’ll be able to get your car in here all right, when we’ve moved all these.’

  ‘When!’

  Rosemary, who had been examining some of the boxes near the door, opened one of them. ‘This lot seem to be books. I think we should concentrate on the books and leave the papers until later, then you can see how many new shelves you’ll need. I’ll just open up a few more of these, then we can take them into the house and sort them there.’

  We laboured away for quite a while. It was a tiresome job – easier when Rosemary found an old wheelbarrow for carrying the boxes back to the house – unpacking the books in the little sitting room and then carrying them upstairs to the spare bedroom. After a while, Eva sat down firmly.

  ‘Too late for coffee. I’m going to take you both out to lunch. No, Rosemary, dear, we’ve done enough for one day.’

  While we were washing the dust off our hands, Rosemary said to Eva, ‘If you’ll give me the key I’ll go and lock up the garage – I know you, you’ll forget all about it and, although I know you’d like all that stuff to disappear, I don’t believe in actually encouraging crime.’

  Eva pulled a face and fished the padlock key from her apron pocket. ‘I know you’re right, Rosemary dear, but really, no one ever comes down the lane. Whose car shall we go in?’

  After that, whenever we had time, Rosemary and I helped to move boxes.

  ‘However many we do,’ I said, ‘it never seems to make any impression.’

  ‘I know,’ Eva said despairingly. ‘I think they multiply in the night.’

  But, eventually, most of the books were rescued and shelves put up to accommodate them – the few that Eva could bear to get rid of (Pastoralism in Tropical Africa – no, I’ve never read it but it’s one of Alan’s; I must keep that. You can ditch the one on home economics, though, it was a review copy; I can’t think why I kept it’) were sent to various charity shops and only the papers, now housed in several filing cabinets, were left in the garage.

  ‘No, I can’t be bothered to sort them now,’ Eva said firmly. ‘And, no, I don’t particularly want to put my car in there; it’s perfectly all right in the lane.’

  Rosemary shrugged and said, ‘It seems a pity not to get the whole thing done properly – you know how it will be, you’ll never get around to them now.’ Rosemary hates to leave any job half finished.

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ Eva said, ‘I may have to do something about them. I had an e-mail from Geoffrey Bailey – you know, he was Alan’s publisher.’

  Alan had written several books about his various assignments which had been very well received, though I remember Eva’s descriptions of how difficult it was to get him pinned down in one place long enough to get anything written. ‘And, of course, who had to cope with the copy editor’s queries and read the proofs?’ she said. ‘Poor Geoffrey was tearing his hair out when he needed an answer urgently to some query and Alan was in a desert somewhere and the phone had broken down. Anyway, Geoffrey wants me to write a sort of short “life”, as an introduction
to Alan’s unpublished stuff.’

  ‘That would be splendid,’ I said. ‘Is there much there?’

  ‘God knows. As you saw, there’s a mass of papers and I do rather dread tackling them, but now I have an actual reason for doing it, I really must get down to sorting them out.’

  ‘Will you edit them yourself?’ I asked.

  Eva shook her head. ‘I’m not sure. Geoffrey has a couple of people in mind who could do it, but …’ She hesitated. ‘I suppose I feel I should do it – one last thing I could do for him.’

  She looked at me. ‘You’ll understand, Sheila.’

  Although I’ve been a widow for many years now, I can remember how it was when Peter died and how I felt the need to pin him down, as it were, by doing something to affirm the fact that he had been a person, unique in his own right and not just a memory, fading with time.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I understand. And I think it’s a very good idea for you to have a special project. Anyway, if someone else did it they’d always be referring back to you – there’ll be things only you know about, not to mention dates and so forth.’

  Eva groaned. ‘Not dates! I’m hopeless at dates – I barely know what day of the week it is.’

  Rosemary continued to lament the fact that Eva’s garage was still full of unsorted papers.

  ‘It really wouldn’t take long just to get them organised in a general way – chronologically or something, and at least she’d know what was there.’

  I laughed. ‘She’ll get around to it, eventually – Geoffrey will see to that. But you know how it is,’ I continued. ‘She’s putting it off because she still hasn’t really accepted that Alan won’t be back to sort them himself. It does take a while.’

  ‘Yes, of course, I’m an idiot not to have realised. I shouldn’t have pushed her to do all that clearing out.’

  ‘No, one needs a push, to be energised, as Eva said, otherwise it would be easy just to sit back and let things flow over you.’