Letters From the Past

by Erica James

  ‘Cousin Isabella,’ he said, ‘you look positively divine.’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘Well, I feel like hell after a day spent with that dreadful lush, Hugo Gerrard. He’s such an old ham of an actor. Where are you taking me for dinner? I’m starving.’

  ‘I’ve booked us a table at Rules. But first I suggest we have a couple of cocktails in the bar. Hopefully that will smooth your ruffled feathers.’

  ‘You know I’m still quite cross with you,’ she said, when they had walked the short distance from the theatre to the restaurant and were seated on padded stools at the bar.

  ‘Why? What have I done?’

  ‘You know jolly well what I’m talking about. You got your poor stepmother into so much trouble the night of Kit and Evelyn’s party.’

  ‘Am I to be held responsible for her inability to hold her drink?’

  ‘You knew exactly what you were doing, and what the consequences would be. You did it to annoy your father, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  He frowned. ‘Are you going to be like this all evening?’

  ‘Like what exactly?’

  ‘So boringly tetchy.’

  ‘Would you rather I was more like your stepmother, then?’

  ‘Not at all, but I’d prefer you didn’t bite my head off every time I opened my mouth.’ He took a gulp of his drink. Then appeared to think about it before draining his glass in one long swallow.

  Seeing the way his face had darkened, Isabella thought how easily his mood slipped – gone was the easy-going insouciance of before; in place now was sulky annoyance. But then she had just deliberately riled him by taking him to task over Julia. Observing the taut expression on his face, she suddenly thought how similar he looked to his father. Not for the first time she wondered if, like his father, Ralph had his own darker side, and how that might manifest itself. She sipped her drink in silence, letting him stew in his own petulance.

  Eventually, and after he’d lit a cigarette, he spoke. ‘I wonder if the real reason you’re so cross is because it was your idea that I charmed and flattered Julia. Perhaps you feel guilty?’

  ‘Perhaps I do,’ she conceded.

  As though the admission had mollified him, he offered up a smile. ‘You have to admit, though, it was quite funny when she fell over, wasn’t it?’

  Isabella shook her head. ‘No. It was horrible. Like watching a car crash.’

  ‘Then you shouldn’t have made me dance with her.’

  ‘I wanted you to make her happy, not get her punished by your bully of a father. It’s common knowledge back at home that he locked her in her room the next day, and with nothing to eat.’

  Ralph frowned. ‘How would anyone know that?’

  ‘Come off it, Ralph, you can’t sneeze in the village without everybody knowing about it.’

  ‘Well, they got it wrong. Julia was simply off-colour with a hangover and needed to rest.’

  ‘And who told you that?’

  ‘My father and Miss Casey.’

  ‘You don’t think that’s exactly what he would tell you to hide what a monster he is?’

  Viciously stubbing out his cigarette, he said, ‘You know what, I’m sick of this conversation. I used to think you were fun.’

  ‘You mean you thought I was as shallow as you,’ she fired back.

  He glared at her, then getting to his feet and whipping out his wallet from the inside pocket of his suit jacket, he threw down a handful of money on the bar. ‘I’m not sticking around for any more criticism from you. I’m off someplace where the girls know how to enjoy themselves, and where they don’t feel the need to put a fellow down.’

  Quick as a flash, she scooped up the money and threw it at him. ‘Then you’d better take this with you as you’ll need to pay those girls, won’t you?’

  What happened next took no more than a split second. First, Isabella saw Ralph raise his hand to strike her across the face, then the man sitting at the bar on the stool behind Ralph snatched hold of his arm. ‘That, sir,’ he said, ‘is no way to treat a lady.’ Wrenching himself free, Ralph looked ready to strike the stranger who had intervened.

  The stranger was now on his feet. ‘Apologise to your friend this instant,’ he said. ‘And do it before I feel the need to take you outside and teach you how to be a gentleman.’

  With people looking on, including the bar staff, Isabella saw the reluctance in Ralph’s face to do as he was being asked. She didn’t think she could feel more disgusted or disappointed in a person. ‘You truly are your father’s son, aren’t you?’ she said.

  The change of expression on Ralph’s face told Isabella that her words had hit home. ‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered.

  ‘Try saying it like you mean it,’ the other man said.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Isabella said, not wanting the ugly scene to become any uglier. She was embarrassed enough as it was. ‘He’s said he’s sorry.’

  The man shrugged, but then jabbed Ralph’s shoulder with a finger. ‘Time you went, I think.’

  For a moment Ralph looked as if he might disagree, and in the strongest terms. But then without glancing back at Isabella, he strode away, his head up, brazenly defying the stares of those who had witnessed the altercation.

  Another theatrical exit, thought Isabella, watching him go.

  ‘Are you all right?’ the man standing in front of her asked.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘There was no need for you to involve yourself, but thank you for stepping in.’ Studying his face closely, she suddenly had the strangest feeling that she recognised him, but couldn’t think from where. He was rather handsome, for a man of his age, in his late forties, possibly early fifties. He had thick dark hair shot through with grey, and his equally dark intelligent eyes were fixed on hers.

  ‘May I buy you a drink?’ he asked, ‘something to take away the unpleasantness of—’ He broke off and stared hard at her with a peculiar look on his face. ‘I’m experiencing the oddest sensation,’ he said. ‘Do I know you?’

  Growing used to being recognised, she said nonchalantly, ‘You might have seen me in a film, or on the stage in a play.’

  ‘You’re an actress?’

  She nodded. ‘I’m about to appear in a play at the Athena Theatre, alongside Hugo Gerrard.’ She guessed a man of his age would probably remember Hugo from his heyday years.

  He smiled, but looked puzzled. ‘I really do feel that we’ve met before.’

  ‘Funnily enough, you seem familiar to me too. Perhaps we met at a party?’

  ‘I seldom go to parties these days; they bore me rigid. Although I did go to one recently, up in Suffolk. It was for an old friend of mine and her husband who were—’

  ‘Would that be Evelyn and Kit Devereux?’ she cut in.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, surprise showing on his handsome face. ‘Were you there? At Meadow Lodge?’

  ‘I certainly was.’

  His smile widened. ‘Now isn’t that a coincidence?’

  ‘It is,’ she said. ‘But we weren’t actually introduced. But I do remember you now.’ She gave a small laugh. ‘Mostly because of the look of astonishment on Evelyn’s face when she clapped eyes on you.’

  ‘I tend to have that effect on women,’ he said with a small laugh of his own. Then making himself comfortable on the stool next to Isabella, he said, ‘Now about that drink, what would you like? Or better still, how would you like to have dinner with me?’

  Chapter Forty

  Fairview, Melstead St Mary

  November 1962

  Hope

  ‘Look here, Hope, I can’t help being called out, it is my job after all to care for my patients.’

  ‘I’m just saying that it’s not always necessary for you to drop everything and go tearing off. You’ve said yourself how people often take advantage of your good nature. Or
how they cry wolf at the drop of a hat.’

  ‘I’d hardly call poor old Fred Tucket falling down the stairs and breaking his elbow crying wolf.’

  ‘You know what I mean!’ snapped Hope, straining to move a heavy tea-chest.

  They had finally moved in to Fairview four days ago but they were a long way from unpacking everything. Just in this room where they were standing – the library – there had to be at least twenty boxes full of books waiting to be unpacked. She had been here for the last two hours while Edmund was out. So much for his promise to help her. As he had promised yesterday, and the day before that. Three promises, all of which he’d failed to keep. What other more important promises had he broken?

  He’d returned a few minutes ago full of talk about having received a telephone call at the surgery from some old colleague or other with whom he’d studied medicine. His jovial mood could not have vexed her more. It was during his absence that a second letter had arrived in the afternoon post. Heather, their housemaid, had brought it to Hope.

  i warned you before about neglecting

  your husband. you’ll pay the price

  one of these days.

  The nasty tone of the letter – again compiled by words cut from a newspaper – made her suspect even more that it was Arthur who was behind it. But she knew that was wishful thinking, because if it was her brother, she could dismiss the letters as nothing more than spite on his part. But if it wasn’t Arthur, and she had to consider that possibility very seriously, then she had to accept that there was some truth in what the letters said about Edmund.

  Whoever had sent the second letter knew that Hope and Edmund had moved to Fairview, just as he or she had known they had been staying at Island House before. The handwriting on the envelope was not her brother’s, that was just about all she could be sure of. She would recognise his scrawl anywhere. Holding the letter and reading it a second time, then a third and a fourth, Hope had shaken with angry shock.

  To her shame she had wept, choking tears of misery rolling unbidden down her cheeks. But terrified Heather might hear her sobbing, she had pulled herself together and methodically folded the letter, put it back inside the envelope and slipped it into her skirt pocket. By the time Edmund returned she had taken out the worst of her wretchedness in the library unpacking boxes at a furious rate. But she didn’t trust herself to look at him. She couldn’t bear to see the duplicity in his face. A face she had always found so reassuring. Now she wanted to slap it hard. How dare you betray me! How could you do it?

  ‘Hope, are you listening to me?’

  Unable to speak, and blinking hard to stop hot stinging tears from spilling over again, she ignored his question and instead tried to move the heavy tea chest.

  ‘For God’s sake!’ stormed Edmund, roughly snatching the box out of her hands and banging it down on the ground between them. Both his words and his actions made her jump. He so rarely raised his voice or lost his temper.

  ‘Hope,’ he said more reasonably, ‘I know you’re cross with me, but please, tell me what’s wrong. What have I done that makes you want to find fault with everything I say and do?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she managed to say.

  ‘Yes you do. You haven’t been yourself for some weeks.’ He hesitated. ‘I’ve noticed you’ve been smoking more too. You’re not . . . it’s not a recurrence of—’

  Despite the softness of his tone now, or maybe because of it and what it implied, fury pulsed through her. ‘Do not patronise me, Edmund,’ she retorted peevishly. ‘Don’t ever treat me like one of your simpering hypochondriac female patients! And so what if I am smoking more? Do not presume to lecture me!’

  His eyebrows shot up. ‘I’m only asking if—’

  ‘If I’m having one of my episodes? I assure you I’m not.’

  He shook his head with a weariness that added to her infuriation. He didn’t believe her. Didn’t believe that she could be perfectly all right. In his opinion, if she was behaving ‘oddly’, it could be only one thing, that she was succumbing to the dreaded ‘black dog’.

  That was the trouble with being married to a doctor; they always thought they knew best. She saw it all the time in the village, all those pathetically needy women putting their beloved Dr Flowerday on a pedestal, hanging on his every word.

  Time was she had been proud of the adoration he instilled in his patients, proud too of the way everyone spoke so highly of him. But since that first letter had arrived, and now a second, she viewed the devotion of his patients as cloying. Now if she heard anyone saying what a truly special doctor he was, or how lucky she was to be married to such an exceptional man, she wanted to scream at them that he was nothing of the sort. He was a lying cheating husband!

  ‘Hope,’ he said, cutting short the flow of her thoughts, ‘it’s been a tiring time for us recently, what with selling our old home, staying at Island House and then moving here. It’s a lot of upheaval and I know you don’t like change, not when all you want to do is focus your energy on your writing. I know how important that is to you. I really do.’

  ‘I told you I’m fine,’ she said flatly.

  ‘Why then is it that I can’t open my mouth without you criticising me?’

  ‘Maybe you should take a look at yourself and wonder why that might be. Now please, are you going to help with these books, or are you going to continue standing there hindering me?’

  He stared at her. ‘You clearly have something in mind that I’ve done, or not done, so why not do the decent thing and just tell me what it is?’

  She wanted to. She really did. But what was the point? He would only deny it. Or worse, admit what he’d been doing. To hear him confess his deceit would be too much to bear.

  The ringing of the telephone out in the hall called a halt to their conversation. ‘Answer it then,’ snapped Hope as he continued to stare at her. ‘It’ll be for you. It’s always for you.’

  With a sigh, Edmund left the room, closing the door after him. Seconds later it opened, and he poked his head around the door. ‘I have to go. That was Miss Gant saying Miss Treadmill is having chest pains. Can we talk later, when I’m back?’

  She gave an indifferent shrug of her shoulders, not caring how he might interpret it. When he’d gone and she heard his car driving away, she hurled the book in her hands across the room. It was only a few months ago, while still living in their old house, that on a bright and sunny day she had taken Edmund outside, telling him to keep his eyes closed until she said he could open them. Handing him the keys to a new Jaguar Mk 2, the very model he had said he’d love to own, she’d said, ‘Take it for a spin, to be sure that it lives up to your expectations.’

  ‘Of course it will!’ he’d said delightedly, his face wreathed in boyish pleasure. ‘But I don’t deserve it.’

  No, she thought now, you don’t deserve it, Edmund, you bloody well don’t!

  To stop herself crying again as she remembered so vividly her happiness at buying something she had known Edmund wanted, she clenched her fists and rammed them against her eyes.

  When did it all go wrong? They’d been happy once, hadn’t they? Or had their relationship been a mistake from the start? Had Edmund only ever felt sorry for her? Had he regarded her as a grieving widow to whom he could minister and make whole again?

  Despite the cold of the day and the fading light, she went out to the hall, then along the corridor to the boot room where she threw on her old mackintosh. Pushing her feet into her rubber boots and then searching for a headscarf, she called to Heather in the kitchen that she was going for a walk.

  She needed to think. She needed to decide what she was going to do. If she confronted Edmund, she had to accept that he might confess the truth to her. And if he did, she had to know what her reaction would be. Could she forgive him if he promised never to betray her again, or would it always be ther
e between them, an impenetrable barrier? Could she ever trust him again? And was it her fault he had strayed? Was she simply too dull for Edmund?

  Stomping along the lane, the wind whipping the leaves from the trees, and her hair working itself loose from the headscarf she’d tied under her chin, she thought back to the night of the party at Meadow Lodge. She recalled the way Edmund had enjoyed himself dancing that absurd dance called the twist. He had been so uninhibited, the exact opposite to her. She could never dance that way.

  Her brother Kit had been his usual sweet self to her that night and, in his customary easy-going manner, had dismissed the idea that the poison pen letter she had been sent was anything but a case of village mischief-making. He’d told her not to give it another thought, which was so typical of him. He always did tend to put his head in the sand.

  Had she done something similar during the years she had been married to Edmund? Had she subconsciously known something was wrong, but refused to face it by burying herself in her work?

  The accusation in the letter that she had neglected her husband bit deep. But the truth always did hurt. She had told Kit the night of the party that she believed herself to be a failure as a wife, and while at the time she had made the comment out of self-pity, she now had to accept that she had indeed been a failure. Why else had Edmund gone elsewhere to satisfy himself?

  It was almost dark, she suddenly realised, her eyes having grown accustomed to the gathering dusk. The presence of lights softly glowing from the cottages ahead of her brought about this awareness. She ought to turn around and go home, but she couldn’t face it. Not yet. Not even to what was meant to be their dream home. Instead, and pushing her hands deep into the pockets of her coat, she trudged on in the gloom, the cold wind slicing through her.

  She passed the turning in the road that led to the entrance for Melstead Hall, and for a moment was tempted to march all the way up the long drive to have it out with her brother. ‘Is it you sending me these hateful letters?’ But if it was him, he would only deny it and would somehow end up with the upper hand. Just as he always did. Never would she give him the satisfaction of knowing he had successfully rattled her, or that somebody else had.