The Slow Death of Maxwell Carrick

by Jan Harvey

  ‘I do not know to what you refer,’ he said starkly. ‘I find her absolutely delightful as I did from the second I met her.’

  ‘You have been made blind by love,’ I said. ‘If such strong emotion is what such a whirlwind affair can bring forth, personally I find it hard to believe.’

  ‘We have spent far more time with each other than most before they announce such things, especially in a state of war. One has to make the most of things and seize the day.’

  He was fighting back when I had expected him to roll over because he had always trusted my word above all things; I scrambled around for something to say.

  ‘What of Grant? He told me last night that Cécile had told him to go and I believe he has now indeed departed.’ Now George’s face reddened. He ran a finger around the collar of his shirt as if it was too tight, something he did when he was wishing he were somewhere else.

  ‘Grant is another matter. I do not wish to discuss it.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She received a letter yesterday and hid it from you.’ I indicated the direction with my head. ‘It’s there behind the wood of the fireplace.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I saw it. There was a small portion of it sticking out and I tried to retrieve it but instead dislodged it. She certainly didn’t want you to see it.’

  ‘See what?’ It was Cécile, she was wearing a tweed suit, it was vaguely familiar.

  ‘Carrick says you have concealed a letter dearest, in here.’

  She remained cool, unmoved, her eyes never left mine. ‘I did not conceal it, I left it on the mantel for you to read, George.’ She walked to the fireplace. ‘Where is it, Carrick?’

  I knew then that she had been listening at the door.

  ‘According to Carrick, it has fallen down the back there,’ said George.

  ‘What a shame. I will have to remember the contents.’

  ‘Who was it from?’ I asked, there was a tight knot of tension in my belly.

  She sat down in the third armchair and calmly poured herself a cup of tea.

  ‘I do not see that it is any concern of yours, Carrick,’ she said, and George grunted an agreement without regarding me at all. I did not recognise him as my friend anymore. I felt the bile rising inside me. It was embarrassingly awkward, two against one. ‘However, I will tell you that it was from my solicitor in Paris about my affairs, I must try to return soon to address some personal issues. Perhaps you feel you should accompany me, Carrick, to check on what transpires, it would appear that you do not think I am trustworthy?’

  I was levelling a stare at her that was so fierce I felt I might scorch her with it. ‘Who was the man in Oxford?’ I asked maliciously. ‘Who was he?’

  ‘There was no “man.” You have asked me this before Carrick and I told you then.’

  ‘It was you, in a red jacket, the same jacket,’ I insisted.

  ‘No, it was not. It was a similar one, but of a quite different shade.’

  ‘And your hotel, they did not know you when I came to call on you.’

  She was cold as ice and the room itself was growing chillier by the minute with no Grant to light the fire. Who would do that now I wondered?

  She spoke calmly and quietly. ‘I was not staying at that hotel you simply presumed I was. I was actually there to–’

  George, who up until that point had been staring at the tea tray unmoved, took over. ‘I will not have my fiancée interrogated like this,’ he snapped. ‘I have had enough and I must draw a line. Whatever Cécile was or was not doing in Oxford is no concern of yours or indeed mine.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Carrick, I must insist that you move out tonight for, as I was saying earlier, Cécile and I would like some time to ourselves.’

  I looked from one to the other of them and stood up. I had obviously been the subject of discussions that had taken place elsewhere. I had nothing to say that would have made me look anything other than bitter. I walked to the door and took one last look at them both. She had her back to me. He was staring straight ahead, his face flushed with contained anger. There was my good friend George, to whom I had been only loyal and true for twenty-four years, and the woman who had come between us.

  I heard her say, ‘Well said, chéri.’ She knew full well I could still hear her. ‘It is long past the time for him to go – he has been taking from this family for too long.’

  There was never more hatred in the bones of any man than I felt against that woman that day and, as I climbed those stairs for the last time as part of the Amsherst family, I vowed to God I would take my revenge on her.

  43

  Norman Fry lived in the most humble of cottages. The clay floor was covered in a worn rug, threadbare and dirty. In front of the large fireplace, which had been swept clean, there was a scruffy little dog. I could smell it from the second we entered the room.

  The living room was small, two old armchairs and a narrow fold down table, with a single dining chair, almost filled it. There was a small television in the corner, the racing was on, the sound turned low so that the commentator’s voice was a murmur.

  Norman was a small man with a weather-beaten face and a burgundy nose, a drinker. He was wearing a three-piece tweed suit that had seen better days.

  ‘Come on in and sit down.’ He moved a tortoiseshell cat off the oldest and greyest armchair, I hadn’t spotted it, such was its camouflage. ‘Here you go, have Bess’s chair.’ He ushered me to the place where the cat had been, it was covered with fur. ‘Can I get you some tea?’

  ‘No thank you, Norman, we’ve just had one,’ I replied quickly because I had just seen the state of the kitchen next door. Rory had taken a seat on the dining chair so that his back was to the window and the grey net curtains that sorely needed replacing.

  ‘So Mr McBride tells me you would like to know a bit about my mother?’

  ‘Yes please. I wondered if you could tell me about her time at Lapston?’ I replied.

  ‘Oh yes, now let me see, all in all, she was there for a couple of years, perhaps a tad longer. She did love it, worked for old Mrs Hall. What a lovely lady she was, full of kindness. My mum was a scullery maid at first and then a kitchen maid. She learned everything she knew from Mrs Hall, including how to bake. Oh yes, she was a fantastic baker, my mum.’

  ‘What year did she join the staff?’

  ‘When she was fourteen, so I would think it was nineteen forty-two or forty-three, somewhere about that time. She was in service like her mother and her mother before her.’ He rested his hands over his old tweed waistcoat and sat back. ‘Though they say my grandmother was of gypsy stock. That’s why we have such dark hair, well I’m grey now of course, but I was once dark as a raven’s back and I go brown very easily skin-wise too.’

  ‘There was a butler, Grant,’ I said, trying to make him focus on the house and its residents.

  ‘Oh yes, Grant. He was with the family in London, back in the day. He had replaced that old con artist, Fellowes. Did you know about him being in league with the Edwards brothers? They tried to steal the silver, you know.’ I nodded. ‘Oh yes, they worked together to steal it. He was, by all accounts, a nasty piece of work, family couldn’t see it in him, you see. Too nice.’

  ‘What about Grant?’ I asked.

  ‘I have no idea, the only thing I know is that one day he was there the next he had gone. My mother was sweet on him, the older man. He was rather dashing, she said. She had her head full of Mr Grant, oh that’s to be sure.’

  ‘So he just went overnight?’ asked Rory. ‘Disappeared?’

  ‘I think so, my mum never heard from him again, I suspect Mrs Hall would have told her if she had had any word from him.’

  ‘And the parents were Reginald and Augusta?’

  ‘Yes, lovely people, by all accounts but, you see my mum didn’t k
now them, all she knew was they was very missed.’ The dog raised its head and I could see its top jaw was longer than the bottom one. Its breathing was very laboured I guessed that it was very old. It returned to its slumbers and began a very loud nasal snore.

  ‘That’s Carrick,’ Norman said with a smile.

  ‘Carrick?’ I said, my ears pricking up. ‘Wasn’t that the name of someone who lived at Lapston?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Carrick, that’s right. He was a cousin or something, always there my mum had a crush on him too, truth be told.’ I smiled. ‘He was a lovely man, very gentle and kind, and he always took time to thank Mrs Hall, and my mum, for whatever they did for them. That’s why my mum liked him so much; he was a good man, a true old-fashioned gentleman.’

  ‘And you say he was a cousin?’

  ‘I think so,’ said Norman, looking up as if he was trawling his mind for more information. ‘I may be wrong on that.’

  ‘And there was Alice and George too?’

  ‘Oh yes, for a long time, there were the three of them, three kids, happy as pigs in clover, thick as thieves. Then George met a woman called Russell.’

  ‘Roussell,’ I corrected him.

  ‘No, Russell, I thought it was. I’m almost sure it was, my love. My mum saw her arrive you know, then without a by-your-leave, my old mum was sacked.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes she left the week after Grant.’

  ‘Had your mum done something wrong?’

  ‘No, she was very hurt by it and very angry. She was told to go and that was it, with no references too. Mrs Hall sorted them out for her with Mr Carrick.’

  ‘This Madame Roussell owned the house after the Amshersts, didn’t she?’

  ‘I don’t know, my love, you see my mum was on the outside after that. It was deserted until the priests came and then no one was allowed near. They made those poor boys work instead of having staff.’

  ‘Weren’t the boys ill?’ I asked.

  ‘No, love, that’s what people called it. A hospital. But it was really an orphanage. I saw them when I was a little boy, used to go in through the gate by the church. They all looked so thin and wretched and they wrapped their arms round their poor sad selves, like they was always cold.’

  ‘Poor little sods,’ said Rory.

  ‘Aye, poor things, no mums and dads, they were evacuees whose mums and dads never came for them, so I was told and there was them that wouldn’t behave with their village families.’

  ‘What happened to the family?’

  ‘The Amshersts? I can’t tell you. My mum heard they had gone away, but I don’t think it was good for them, they lost the house.’

  ‘Was someone murdered, or killed?’

  ‘Oh yes, that was a rumour going around that someone died. That French woman, she was the turning point. After that it was tragic.’

  44

  In my whole life, I never knew such pain as I did those following weeks. It was the most intense feeling of loneliness and of being entirely ostracised. I had also received word from Peterson that he was returning from Italy with a severe burn to his face and would need his flat. I did not say anything, for it was not for me to complain, his kindness in letting me use the place had been exemplary.

  There was nothing for it; I took lodgings in Oxford, in a small arts and crafts house in Jericho, with a high-pitched roof and a garden that sloped gently down towards the canal. I gave up the lease on my studio and took a madman’s delight in burning the paintings and drawings one by one. I watched as the flames caught and curled the edges, reducing them to shards of blackened paper. I thought that burning memories like that would ease my pain, but it did not.

  Remarkably, I had had only a few attacks, none had been overwhelming and I had not blacked out. At one point, I found myself cowering in a corner of the bedroom of my new house in the middle of the night, but I recovered soon enough. I even told myself it was all related to Lapston and the unrequited love of… of her. What did she call it? Amour fou; insane love and maybe she was right, maybe I was insane. They had both said it after all and neither of them had made any form of contact since I left Lapston, neither at the flat nor my club. It grieved me that George could forget me so easily.

  I had been living for about a fortnight in Oxford when I met Dillie in Broad Street, she with the high-pitched whine to her voice that made my head ache. She had heard that George and his fiancée, the French lady she called her, (I did not remind her of the name) were in Scotland with Douglas and his family. In spite of it all, I felt the deepest wrench in my heart when I thought of George and how he had spoken to me, but I could not bring myself to think about her at all.

  Dillie was wittering on about how lucky Scotland had been to escape the hardships of the war, when I cut across her and made it obvious that I was not listening to a word she was saying.

  ‘Do you know if Alice is back at Lapston, by any chance?’ I asked.

  ‘No, no one is, save Mrs Hall, Ogden and the boy who does the horses.’

  ‘Is it closed down?’

  ‘I should imagine it might well be. Are you no longer staying there, Carrick?’

  I did not wish to reply for fear I would become the subject of gossip. ‘I have been busy with various affairs and have had no time to visit.’

  ‘Have you moved here?’ she asked, stepping closer, obviously intrigued. I moved back, away from her, just as a horse and cart pulled up beside us, the harness jingling. The smell reminded me of Jester. I shifted away to make room for the driver to place a nosebag over the animal’s head.

  We were standing nearer to the window of Blackwell’s bookshop, Dillie even closer to me than before. ‘We must meet up, Carrick.’ She placed a small gloved hand on my arm. ‘I would love to dine with you, perhaps in Little Clarendon Street one evening?’

  The idea repelled me. Dillie was the last person in the world I wanted to spend an evening with. I mumbled some sort of excuse about being away for a while and vowed inwardly to avoid her at all costs. She looked hurt as she drew away but I could not have cared less. I realise now that I was hurting in extremis myself.

  Alice could not have been more correct when she said that Christmas would never be the same again. No invitation came, nowhere to go, and no word from Lapston. I had written a letter to Mrs Hall enclosing my new calling card, the address of my new house printed on it. She had written a letter thanking me for it and telling me that George and Cécile had been invited to stay in Scotland for the festivities and that she should not be at all surprised, given the nature of recent conversations, if they did not look to settling there eventually. I recalled Sir Reginald’s warm Edinburgh accent and his love of all things Scottish. What, I wondered, would he have made of George’s poor choice in women?

  Mrs Hall wrote further that Lizzie had been let go and needed a reference. I obliged, wondering at the same time, why George would not supply one, for surely Lizzie had done nothing wrong.

  Although I had not seen them for two months, I still yearned for everything to be back to normal, for us all, yes even her if it had to be so, to be sitting around that fire in the lounge at Lapston, or in the dining room with the family portraits looking down upon us.

  As the nights drew in and the temperature plummeted, I became low. I had written and telephoned Alice’s barracks but she had not returned my letters or calls. There was nothing for it, I decided I would take the train to Cambridge and see her myself. She could not deny me in person, but even as I set about my plan, all thoughts of her troubled me. I had been a brute, very unkind, and I had delivered a low blow. It was little wonder that she would not reply to my messages and letters. I fully recognised that she deserved an apology.

  The telegram arrived the same day, just as I closed the front door. I tipped the boy and he cycled off with a whistle.

  As I tore the envelope open and read it, a D
akota thundered overhead, the low, throaty roar followed by its all-consuming shadow. Everything seemed to go dark, there was no movement or sound in the street, save for the omnipresent thrum of that plane.

  “Alice killed Stop In France Stop Coming home Stop George.”

  When the plane had passed over, the world was still dark, the clouds grey, the road under my feet black as iron. There was no colour, nothing, just a small monochrome world around me, and it was if there were no oxygen left for me to breathe.

  45

  ‘All our dogs were named after people from the big house,’ Norman said, bending down stiffly to place a saucer of water by little Carrick. The poor thing looked at it, shivering, but choosing to leave it, he returned to his sleep. ‘He’s been a little bugger this one, quite an escape artist, but I love him. He’s the last of the seven.’

  I smiled to humour him, but really I wanted to get back to the mystery. ‘And all are named after the residents of Lapston?’ I asked patiently.

  ‘Oh yes, he’s the last. My mum named them all; Alice, Reggie, Gussie, Henry, Georgie and Carrick. After the first dog, a lab called Prince, there were two spaniels, Henry and Georgie, but the rest have been Heinz 57s. She loved her dogs, my mum. Hated cats, mind, couldn’t stand them.’

  ‘What happened after the French lady came on the scene?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, well then, it was all very sad. You see, Mr. Carrick chose to move permanently to Oxford. His father came from the city originally. My mother never met the father of course, he was away all the time.’ Norman settled back in his armchair. ‘It was a rum do. Miss Alice was killed in Normandy. She was on a plane carrying medicines; they say she volunteered, even though she knew it would be dangerous. They could have a red cross on them if they was carrying just food, and stuff, but her plane was carrying ammo too. It was shot down and no one survived. It was a rum do. Such a lovely, lovely lady. I have a picture of her here.’

  He stood up stiffly, a hand on his back. ‘It’s here somewhere… ah, there it is.’ He picked up a small ornate frame. I recognised the smiling face, the bright eyes. Alice was sitting on a farm gate, younger than she had been in the previous photo I’d seen. Behind her was a horse standing in the sun, his eyes closed. She wasn’t wearing riding gear, instead she wore a light coloured dress with a full skirt.