The Cruellest Month

by Hazel Holt

  When I returned to the sitting room Betty said, ‘I’ve just been telling Molly about the article you’re doing now.’

  ‘It seems strange,’ Molly said, ‘that the novels we read, just as books, should now be the subject of learned studies!’

  ‘Time does rush by,’ I said. ‘Before you know where you are life has become history.’

  ‘It’s wartime writers you are dealing with, I believe?’

  ‘Yes. It’s maddening, really. I feel very conscious of my lack of background. I was born just before the war so I wasn’t old enough to remember very much. I’ve done some background reading, of course, as well as the novels, but I still don’t quite have the feel of the period, if you know what I mean. Were you here during the war or in Banbury?’

  ‘I was stuck in Banbury with Mother – I worked at the local hospital, that was my war work. Gwen had to be off and away. She did some driving in the FANYs for a bit and then – I can’t imagine why – she joined the Land Army. She was on a farm near Kidlington, but I don’t think she enjoyed it much, though she would never admit that she’d made the wrong decision about anything! Anyway, in 1944 she transferred to the WAAF and went up to Scotland. She had a much livelier war than I did!’

  Molly moved a pile of gardening magazines from the small table at her side and put down her sherry glass.

  ‘Come to think of it,’ she said, ‘Gwen kept a diary for part of the war – though she didn’t keep it up for long. I came across it the other day when I was clearing her things out. It might have some useful background stuff if you’d like to have a look at it. I’ll find it and send it on to you.’

  ‘That is really very kind of you – I’m sure it would be most useful. You get a real sense of immediacy from a diary – it makes it all so vivid. I’ll take great care of it and let you have it back as soon as I’ve read it.’

  ‘Oh, don’t bother. I don’t want it back. As I said, Gwen meant very little to me by the end.’

  After we had had some excellent lentil soup and apple tart Betty hustled us away. Molly came to the door to say goodbye.

  ‘I won’t forget about the diary,’ she said. ‘I really want to have a good clear-out so that I can turn that room back into a proper studio again, as it used to be before she came back.’

  Betty talked non-stop on the way back about the Great Tew village school and the preservation of rural England, expecting no more than an interested murmur from me. I was glad not to have to make conversation because I had a lot to think about. Was Molly quite indifferent about her sister, or had she felt more deeply the unfairness of her own life and fury at the casual way Gwen had come back to interrupt the first independence and real happiness that Molly had ever known. She seemed placid enough, but I knew that women of her generation especially had learned to hide their deeper, rawer feelings behind a mask of politeness and conventional behaviour. It would not have been surprising if a bitter resentment had festered over the years. I knew too that family hatreds were often the strongest of all. I found myself wondering if Molly ever read in the Bodleian, and where she had been on the day that Gwen had died. I was annoyed with myself for having missed the chance of asking her. I would somehow have to make another opportunity of seeing her.

  It was well on into the afternoon when we got back and it hardly seemed worth going into Oxford so I thought I might help Betty put leaflets into envelopes and type out the agenda for one of her meetings. I was wrestling with Betty’s old portable typewriter, which had the nasty habit of working its way to the edge of the table as one hit the keys, when the telephone rang. It was Fitz, inviting me to dinner the following evening

  ‘I have also invited Professor Howard – I believe you said you had met him – to make up the numbers. I trust that is agreeable to you? Quite informal. We will expect you at seven for seven-thirty, then.’

  I went back to my typing feeling very cheerful. It would be lovely to dine (one used the word instinctively in this context) with Fitz and Elaine – and very pleasant to see Chester Howard again. I began to plan what I would wear. My black blouse would be all right, but I had been meaning to buy a new skirt something a bit fancier than the winter ones I had with me perhaps I might just slip into Marks and Spencer tomorrow and see what they had. I finished the typing and said to Betty, ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll just go up and wash my hair.’

  The next day was brilliantly sunny but with a few dark clouds racing across the sky – a typical April day in fact. An ‘Oh, to be in England!’ sort of day, I thought happily as I walked across the Parks, my thoughts of Fitz leading to Browning.

  Pamela now greeted me as an old friend, which was nice, and I settled down comfortably to work. I was disturbed, however, by a pile of folders crashing down beside me on to the desk and an agitated voice saying, ‘Oh, I am sorry – they slipped out of my hand – I’m so sorry to have disturbed you.’

  Other readers around us raised their heads in enquiry or irritation.

  ‘That’s quite all right,’ I said, bending down to rescue some papers that had slid to the floor. ‘Here you are.’

  ‘Thank you so much. Is anyone sitting here?’

  She was a woman in her forties, of medium height and rather stocky. A pair of dark-rimmed spectacles, which were resting half-way down her nose, dominated a nondescript face. She seemed very disorganised and stuffed the papers back into her files in no sort of order and dropped her pencil on to the floor.

  ‘Blast!’ she said and went to the desk to use the pencil sharpener.

  Tony brought her a heavy volume and she settled down to work. She was up again almost immediately and back at the desk. I heard her say in an agitated voice, ‘Oh dear – I seem to have filled in the slip all wrong. I wanted the article on pendant semi-circle scyphoe. It’s in the BSA – British School in Athens – ‘82 and this is BSA ‘81. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ Tony said soothingly. ‘Just sit down and I’ll get it for you.’

  The woman came back and sat down. But it was difficult to concentrate on my work because she was scrabbling about among her papers and making little muttered comments to herself as she did so. I had instinctively reacted when I heard her asking for the Proceedings of the British School in Athens, but, of course, there was no reason why there should be any connection. She only seemed to want to verify some references and didn’t stay long. When she had gone I went over to Tony and asked who she was.

  ‘That’s Dr Lassiter. She works in the Heberden Room at the Ashmolean – old coins. Strictly speaking all those BSA proceedings shouldn’t be here; I’ve had to get them over for her on the conveyor...’

  The telephone went and he moved away to answer it before I could ask him anything about Dr Lassiter, whose name sounded somehow familiar. I went back to my desk worrying away at it, but it was only as I retrieved my umbrella from George at lunchtime that I remembered that it was he who had mentioned her as one of the people who had been working in Room 45 on the day that Gwen Richmond had died.

  I was musing on this as I pushed my way round a crowded Marks and Spencer, but all thoughts of Dr Lassiter, and Gwen Richmond for that matter, went right out of my head when I found just the skirt I’d been looking for. It was very full, with a large paisley pattern in terracotta, stone and olive green on a black back-ground. Miraculously they had it in my size and the right length and, inspired by this, I also bought myself a new lip-stick in a clear bright coral – the sort of colour I thought I had given up wearing years ago.

  I left the Bodleian early to give myself plenty of time to change. As I stood in front of the mirror curling the back of my hair with my electric tongs it occurred to me that the wheel had really come full circle and that I was once again wearing the same hairstyle (it used to be called a page-boy bob) that I had had when I first met Rupert and Fitz, though what, if any, significance this had I really couldn’t imagine. I gave myself a little shake to dispel the ghosts of the past and decided to concentrate on the present.
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  I considered Dr Lassiter as a suspect. If she had been in Room 45 on the day of Gwen’s death, it would have been easy for her to slip away, commit the crime and then come back half an hour later. I knew from my own experience that when you were working you were more or less oblivious of the comings and goings around you. And Tony, Pamela and Felicity were usually too busy at their desks each end of the room to check on the movements of the readers.

  In the corridors she would have been an unobtrusive figure, in her natural setting, you might say, a perfect camouflage. She was quite sturdy – she could easily have brought a heavy book down on Gwen’s head, especially if, as seemed likely, Gwen had been sitting down, and a handbag would easily hold quite a large screwdriver. As for motive – well – I thought suddenly of Gaudy Night and the motive there – something to do with research, perhaps? If they had both been in Greece, Gwen could easily have found out that Dr Lassiter had suppressed some vital ancient document to fit a thesis or had plagiarised something – there were all sorts of scholarly crimes that Dr Lassiter might have been guilty of and that Gwen knew about. I became quite excited about my theory and it was only when the tongs slipped and burned my neck that I realised that now I would have to hurry if I wasn’t to be unforgivably late.

  Chapter Eight

  Fortunately the traffic into Oxford in the evenings is relatively light and I arrived in Norham Gardens quite early and was able to park a few doors away from Fitz’s house where I sat in the car for ten minutes listening to The Archers on the radio, then put on a final dab of face powder and presented myself on the doorstep a fashion-able five minutes late, as Rupert used to say.

  I was glad of the reassurance of my new skirt since Fitz was wearing a dark brown velvet jacket and Chester Howard, who was already there and had risen politely from his chair as I entered, was wearing a dark suit and bow tie which, with his white shirt, looked almost like evening dress.

  Fitz seated me in a triangular chair upholstered in slippery straw-coloured satin and wondered what I would like to drink.

  ‘That delicious Sercial would be lovely,’ I said.

  ‘If you wish,’ he said. ‘Unless you would care to be more adventurous, as it were. We seem to be drinking ouzo.’

  He raised a glass full of an opalescent milky liquid, clinking pleasantly with ice.

  ‘I think that might be a little strong for me,’ I replied, ‘since I’m driving. Perhaps I could have some vermouth.’

  ‘Ah.’ Fitz considered this with some care. ‘Shall we give you French vermouth or Italian ... or perhaps – I know – you shall have some Punt e Mes!’

  I caught Chester Howard’s eye and we both smiled as Fitz poured out a brownish-coloured drink, which I discovered to my dismay tasted rather like cough medicine.

  ‘How is Benson progressing, Professor Howard?’ I asked.

  ‘My friends call me Bill,’ he said, ‘and Benson is doing very nicely thank you. The Bodleian is full of unexpected treasures. I found a letter from Ivor Novello, the other day – isn’t that marvellous? – about a dramatisation of Mapp and Lucia that Benson had done – now wouldn’t that have been something!’

  We chatted about his work for a while and then I asked Fitz about Elaine.

  ‘She is in the kitchen unmoulding the avocado mousse – always an anxious moment, don’t you find? Will it come away cleanly? Will the whole thing, indeed, collapse, as it did on one memorable occasion some years ago when I served it to Robert Frost.’

  Elaine had always been a brilliant cook, but I hadn’t known of Fitz’s interest in cooking.

  ‘It was America that made me into a cook, my dear Chloe. Restaurant food in the United States is (with a few exceptions) not edible – not the sort of thing one could consider offering to one’s guests, so I was obliged to learn the rudiments of the culinary art. Like most things it is not difficult if one applies intelligence and concentration. It is, however, perfectly possible to eat very well in American homes.’ He made a little bow in Bill’s direction.

  ‘Forgive me,’ Bill said, ‘I thought your name was Sheila, but Fitz calls you Chloe?’

  ‘Oh, that is a joke from long ago,’ I said. ‘But, come to think of it, we are none of us using our given names tonight – I am Chloe instead of Sheila, you are Bill and not Chester and Fitz–’

  ‘Yes my dear,’ he broke in irritably, ‘we all know what my given name is.’

  ‘Do you think,’ I suggested frivolously, ‘that it means we are all three hiding behind aliases, like masks, concealing our true natures?’

  ‘I do not believe,’ Fitz said meditatively, ‘that I remember any more what my true nature is.’

  ‘Perhaps we are only truly ourselves in our extreme youth,’ Bill suggested, ‘and become less ourselves as we react to other people.’

  ‘All life is subjective – indeed, metaphysical. Do we in fact exist at all?’

  ‘Superficial chat about life and metaphysics, Chloe dear, went out with undergraduate cocoa parties in the nineteen thirties,’ Fitz said sternly. ‘Let me give you another drink.’

  ‘No, thank you, I’m fine.’ I indicated my almost un-touched glass. As he was pouring drinks for Bill and for himself, Elaine came into the room. Like the house and like her brother she too had hardly changed. When I had first known her she was in early middle age and had already set the style of her appearance. She too was tall and still moved gracefully. Her long face, with large eyes and delicate features, and the way her hair was caught up into a knot behind reminded me, as it always had, of Virginia Woolf. She had always worn ‘artistic’ clothes – long skirts and kerchiefs, like Augustus John’s women – a and this evening she had a long full skirt of a subtle russet brown, a pink shirt and a black velvet waistcoat. She looked absolutely splendid. She came towards me holding out both her hands.

  ‘So this is little Chloe! Dear child, how well I remember those grey eyes. You were my Ophelia, don’t you remember?’

  Indeed, I had forgotten. She had had the habit of making members of Fitz’s circle sit for her and I had been Ophelia when she was doing the illustrations for an edition of Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare. Not, thank goodness, in a tin bath full of water like poor Lizzie Siddal, though uncomfortable enough, crouched on the ground, dressed in a white robe with scratchy garlands in my hair, clutching a posy of flowers, doing my best to convey madness rather than embarrassment. Rupert, I now remembered, had been a magnificent Mercutio in Elizabethan velvets and satins with a cloak which he was most reluctant to be parted from.

  We went into the dining room, Elaine taking with her a large gin and tonic which Fitz declared was the nadir of unadventurousness.

  As we seated ourselves at the oak refectory table, which would have been quite at home in some mediaeval hall, I saw that the avocado mousse had been successfully unmoulded. It was delicious and I complimented Elaine on its delicate flavour and texture. Fitz broke in.

  ‘I was rather concerned;’ he said, ‘whether or not the first and last courses might be too bland. I have, myself, made a soufflée for our last course – sadly we no longer observe the custom of having a savoury – and I feared that there might not be enough contrast of textures. However, we decided to have a really sturdy roast for the main dish, so I do believe that the balance has, on the whole, been properly preserved.’

  He and Bill then embarked antiphonally on a long and detailed anecdote about a particularly memorable meal they had eaten somewhere in France, which involved an Italian count, a stolen goose and some white truffles. I noted that Fitz and Bill had been on holiday in France together. As I listened to their conversation, which was elliptical and full of allusions, I noted an ease and intimacy – a familiarity (though that was not a word I would ever have expected to use of Fitz) that indicated that there was, or had been, something more than friendship between them. I decided ruefully that I need not have bothered to buy a new skirt. When Bill said that he no longer had a family, he had not been referring to a wife and children. I
blushed inwardly at my own naivety – that would teach me to have foolish and uncharacteristic thoughts at my age!

  I recovered myself to find that Elaine was asking me about Michael.

  ‘I gather from Arthur’ – she still resolutely called her brother by his correct name – ‘that you have a son up at Oxford. It so happens that I am making a few studies for a children’s book on the Round Table and I badly need a model for Sir Mordred. Is he, by any chance, dark?’

  I thought of Michael’s reaction to such a proposal and said hastily, ‘Well, no, actually, he’s sort of fairish brown, rather like me...’

  ‘Is he? Then he might just do for Sir Perceval.’

  ‘And.’ I went on, ‘he’s rather tied up at the moment, with Schools, you know. It’s his last term.’

  ‘Always an anxious time,’ Bill said.

  I found that I was now able to meet his eye and said, ‘Almost more anxious for the poor parents! The young seem amazingly casual about such things – though perhaps they simply don’t want us to know what they are feeling.’

  ‘So many of them,’ he replied, ‘at least in my experience, retreat into a sort of dumbness – I use the word in both its English and American senses. It is not that they are inarticulate, but they just can’t seem to be bothered to communicate verbally with anyone.’

  ‘In my day,’ I said, ‘we hid behind a great cloud of verbiage – usually frivolous – perhaps that’s what they lack, frivolity!’