A Bitter Truth (2 page)

“No, this is lovely. Thank you very much.”

I let her drink it in peace, then said as offhandedly as possible, indicating the other doors, “There are five bedrooms here. One of them is mine, and the others are empty just now. Won’t you stay the night, what’s left of it, and wait until the morning to go on your way? I know I’m a stranger to you, and you to me, but there is a lock on the bedroom doors, if you feel the need.”

“I must go—” she began, but I didn’t let her finish.

“Where? If you had a place of your own, you wouldn’t have been sheltered in Mrs. Hennessey’s doorway. I don’t know your reason for being there, that’s your affair. It’s just that I wouldn’t send a dog back out into this weather. And I think you must know that you aren’t dressed for spending the night in the street.”

She looked down at her clothes, smiling ruefully. “I was in something of a hurry.”

“There’s another cup in the pot,” I urged. “And I believe there are some biscuits in the cupboard. Have you had any dinner?”

“I don’t remember. When I last ate, that is. Yesterday?” She accepted the second cup of tea and even one of the biscuits.

I had set my satchel down at the door, and I went to fetch it and put it in my own room. Opening the door to Diana’s, I said, “This should do. The sheets are clean. Mrs. Hennessey sees to that for us. The bed’s quite comfortable, and a good night’s rest makes sense. Tomorrow . . .” I shrugged. “Everything looks better in the daylight, doesn’t it?”

Biting back tears, she said, “Yes, all right. Thank you very much. I don’t like to be a burden, but I dread going back outside. You’re very kind.”

I smiled. “You would have done the same for me, I think, if you had found me on your doorstep with nowhere to go.”

She nearly laughed at that. “My doorstep?” she began, then broke off, shaking her head. “I live in the country,” she added after a moment. “We seldom find strangers at our door.”

Then she was not from London. What had brought her here? Or perhaps I should say, who had brought her here? I waited, hoping she might tell me more, but the moment had passed.

I went to fetch soap and towels, setting them on the table beside her. “You’ll find a fresh nightdress in the tall chest, middle drawer. You and Diana must be of a size. If not, we’ll look for one in Mary’s room.”

I busied myself clearing away the cups and filling the pot for tomorrow morning. I knew what my father and Simon would have to say about taking in a stranger, most particularly one who might be hiding from the police, but my mother would have understood that leaving her to the streets on a night like this was unconscionable. There was no way this woman could have guessed that I would be coming home tonight. She had simply chosen a doorway in which she could find a little respite from the wind. And perhaps, as well, shelter from whoever had struck her such a blow.

She took the towels and after a moment, pulled off her coat and hung it on the rack by the door, as if to be handy if she had to leave in a rush. Her clothing was of the same quality as the coat and her hat.

In the street below, I heard the sharp blast of a constable’s whistle. Was the hunt still on? My guest heard it as well. Crossing quickly to the window, she pulled the curtain aside just far enough to look out. Down in the street someone burst into a drunken song, breaking off as the constable ordered him to move along. Relieved, the woman let the curtain drop, then flushed as she turned to find me watching her. But she didn’t explain her anxiety, ducking her head and moving past me without a word.

I felt a moment’s unease, but it was forgotten as she reached the door to Diana’s room and swayed, suddenly dizzy. From worry? Not eating properly? Bad as it was, I couldn’t quite believe that the blow to her face had been that severe.

The dizziness passed, and I said nothing.

Sitting on the bed in Diana’s room, she allowed me to bring her a fresh cloth for her face, and then gently shut the door behind me with another murmured word of gratitude. I could hear her moving about as she prepared for bed, but I had a feeling she hadn’t looked for a nightgown. Would she leave, once she was warm enough to face the cold again?

I blew out the lamp, went into my own room, and when I had undressed, lay down on the bed to keep watch. But in spite of good intentions, I went soundly to sleep, and when I awoke, it was late morning. I sat up, wondering if my orphan of the storm had left while I slept. I hoped she hadn’t; I could hear the patter of a steady rain. I hastily threw on some clothes and went to see.

To my surprise, I saw that her coat was still there on the tree, and I suspected she was even more tired than I had been. Emotionally as well as physically.

It was close on ten o’clock when I heard her stir, and then she came frantically through the door, still trying to button her jumper, as if somehow believing I’d discovered her name and sent for whoever it was she’d run from. When she found me sitting there with a cup of tea in my hands, looking out the window at the rain, she stopped, suddenly shy.

“I was dreaming,” she said. “I thought—I didn’t recognize my surroundings when I woke up.”

A nightmare, I reckoned, rather than a dream.

“Let me make you a fresh cup.” The bruise was darker today, and there was heavier blackness around her left eye as well. It would be a week—ten days—before it faded completely.

“No, this will do nicely,” she told me, coming forward to pour her own tea. With her back to me, she said, “You must be wondering how I got this—this—” Not able to find the right word, she gestured in the general direction of her face. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t wish to speak of it?”

“Someone struck you.” I let the words fall between us. “I told you, I’m a nurse. I can’t help but know that much,” I went on. “As I said, it’s your affair, of course it is. But if for a while you need sanctuary . . .” I let my voice trail away.

She was torn. I could see that. At a guess, she’d dashed out of the house in the clothes she stood up in, too shocked or frightened to think beyond the need to get away. It would only have occurred to her later to give any thought to where she was going and what she would do when she got there. In fact, I wondered if perhaps she had very little money with her, unprepared to pay for food or hotels or other clothing.

If she was telling the truth about living in the country, perhaps even reaching the train to London had seemed an impossible task. I wouldn’t have wanted to walk from my parents’ house in Somerset to the nearest railway station. Yet when I glanced at her shoes, I could see that they hadn’t seen hard use on a country lane in winter.

She didn’t answer my suggestion directly. Instead she confessed, “I thought—I thought he might follow me. After leaving the railway station, I walked and walked. For hours. First this direction and then that. Until I was completely lost. And there was nowhere to turn, no one I could trust. Not even the constables I passed from time to time. But they must have seen me, because suddenly they were hunting me. He must have given them my description. And I didn’t know what they would do with me, if they caught me. I’ve heard—the suffragettes. They were treated cruelly in prison.”

“The police last evening weren’t hunting you,” I said gently. “They were searching for a deserter. I was on an omnibus. They stopped it and told us why.”

“A deserter?” She stared blankly at me. “I— Are you sure?”

“Quite sure. Unless, of course, the man you speak of is wanted by the police.”

“No, of course he isn’t.” She seemed shocked that I should think such a thing.

I realized then that a guilty conscience had led her to believe the worst.

“He. Your husband?”

“No. Yes.” She came to take the chair across from me, staring at the window. “I wouldn’t want you to think ill of him. That he’s brutal. It was as much my fault as it was his. I—I taunted him. I said things I shouldn’t have. When he struck me, he was as shocked as I was. But I couldn’t stay, you see. Not after that. We can’t take back our actions, can we? However much we may wish to.”

She was taking the blame for what had happened. But I kept an open mind on that issue, having been accustomed to hearing battered women in hospital claim that their drunken husbands hadn’t meant to strike them, that it was their own fault. Their excuses were infinite. Dinner was late, or their husband’s trousers hadn’t been pressed properly, or the children were noisy. I had been a junior sister on a women’s ward where broken bones and bruised bodies were common, and the husband, once sober, came to beg forgiveness. I knew, as the women in the ward had known, that the words were hollow, the promises too. But almost invariably, the wife returned to her home, because she had nowhere else to go.

I thought it best to change the subject before she had talked herself into a deeper sense of guilt. I said, “We weren’t properly introduced last evening. My name is Elizabeth. Elizabeth Crawford. Most of my friends call me Bess. What would you like me to call you?”

Startled, she said quickly, “I’d rather not—”

I smiled. “It’s rather awkward not to know what to call you. I don’t mind if it’s not your true name.”

At that she gave me a faint smile in return. “Yes, all right. My mother’s name was Lydia.”

I went about clearing away the tea things, my back to her, giving her a little privacy. After a few minutes I said, “I must leave to do a little marketing. You must be as ravenous as I am. But you’ll be safe enough here. No one will come, I promise you. And the shops are just a few streets away. I shan’t be long.”

She made no comment. But after a little time had passed, she said, regret in her voice, “I was terribly foolish. I can’t think what came over me. But he’d never struck me before. I was mortified. And angry. And frightened. And so I ran away.”

I could see that in the light of day she was beginning to have very cold feet indeed. I wondered where that would lead her. At the moment she appeared to be convincing herself that the best course open to her was to return to her home. But that could change. I wondered if it was true, that he’d never struck her before this, or if she was concealing other occasions of lashing out in anger. And I still wasn’t convinced that her husband wasn’t in some trouble or other. She wouldn’t betray him. Whatever he had done, whatever they had quarreled about.

I put on my coat and took an umbrella from the stand. “You’ll be here when I return?” I asked. “It’s only that I need to know what to buy.”

She looked at the window, listening to the cold rain pelting down. “I haven’t the courage to leave,” she said in a very small voice.

And so I went out to do my marketing, finding the shops dismally short of everything, but in the end I managed to find half a roast chicken for our dinner, a loaf of bread, and some dried apples as well as a little poppy seed cake for our tea. Walking back to the flat, I wondered if I would find it empty, after all. Without an umbrella, she would be wet to the skin in ten minutes. Even with one, I was hard-pressed to keep my skirts dry.

I came through the door, calling her name softly, but our kitchen cum sitting room was empty. Then the door to Diana’s room opened, and she came out to meet me, looking a little sheepish.

“I heard someone on the stairs,” she said, “and took fright.”

“You needn’t worry. No man—not even my father—escapes the sharp eye of Mrs. Hennessey, who lives on the ground floor.” I hung up my damp coat to dry, returned the umbrella to its stand, then began putting away my purchases. “Even if by some incredible bit of luck your husband discovered you were here, she wouldn’t let him trouble you if you didn’t wish it.”

I could see she didn’t quite believe me, and I wondered just how persuasive her husband might be. Not that it would matter to Mrs. Hennessey, who took pride in protecting the young women she’d accepted as lodgers. Neither cajoling nor bribes would get him anywhere.

A few minutes later, Lydia said out of the blue, as if it had been on her mind all morning and she couldn’t hold it in any longer, “I shouldn’t have brought up Juliana. It was wrong of me.”

Who was Juliana? A member of the family? Her husband’s former sweetheart? His mother? It could be anyone, of course, and yet I could tell from the way she spoke the name that this was someone who mattered a great deal.

I brought out my mending to repair a tear in one of my stockings, giving Lydia an opening to go on talking to me if that eased her mind a little, because it was clear she was wrestling now with whatever was troubling her. A silence fell. As I finished my work, I glanced in her direction. Her thoughts were far away, and I realized that she had herself under control again and was unlikely to blurt out anything more. After putting away my needle and the spool of black thread, I paused by the window, opening the curtains as I tried to think of a way to persuade Lydia to confide in me without seeming to press her. If I could help her to look clearly at whatever had caused the quarrel with her husband, she might be better prepared to consider the future.

“Oh, no,” I said involuntarily, glancing down at the street below.

Instantly she was on her feet, the bruises garish against her pale face, as she all but ran across the room to peer over my shoulder. I could see that she was trembling. “Who is it? Is it Roger?” She was searching the street below, panic in her eyes. “So soon? I’m not ready to face him yet.”

“It’s—a member of my family,” I said, watching Simon Brandon stride toward the door of the house, his motorcar standing just under our window. “My mother must have got the telegram about my Christmas leave.”