After the Armistice Ball (11 page)

‘Is that why the officers so much more often . . .’ I was going to say ‘went to pieces’ but stopped myself in time. This was the first time I had ever spoken to any man about the nuts and bolts of it all. Alec nodded. Then he brought himself back to the present. He took a last deep puff on his cigarette and threw it down into the river.

‘A mother and an elder sister who have just survived the fire that killed the baby?’ His voice grew hard. ‘They would be beside themselves. They would be clawing through the embers with their bare hands, or they would be asleep, unconscious. I’ve seen it countless times. The body just switches off like an electric lamp going out. Sometimes for days. What they would not be doing is sitting in a parlour miles away in fresh clothes, drinking tea, and attuned to the possibility of news.’

‘Couldn’t it
be
a kind of shock?’ I said, desperate to avoid what he seemed to be suggesting. ‘Couldn’t that be a kind of retreat in itself? Like sleeping? I mean, if there were anything going on, wouldn’t they try to act more as they should?’ I warmed to this idea. ‘Wouldn’t they put on a show of grief if they were hiding something?’ At that, though, I remembered Lena Duffy’s survey of the table and the offer of tea that she suppressed before she could utter it, the flare of panic in her eyes as she almost let it slip. ‘Or even if it did seem like only a show,’ I said, ‘couldn’t it be that their real grief strikes even them as so far from the way it is written in books that they feel they must try to . . .’ Alec was shaking his head, but before I could begin a fresh assault, he waved me into silence with a discreet gesture. The police sergeant was approaching.

‘Feeling more like it now, sir?’ he asked, then turned to me. ‘Can I just ask you what your plans are, madam? You were coming to stay, were you not? Will you put up at the Murray Arms, then?’

I stammered for a bit before I spoke. Of course there would be some official business to be gone through, I supposed, but I was no more than one of the many onlookers.

‘I’m sure Lena and Clemence would be grateful for it,’ said Alec softly. I was shocked. Of course it would suit our purposes to have me installed but it was a bit much, on no more evidence than our shared feeling that something was wrong.

‘The inquiry’ll be at Kirkcudbright, doubtless,’ the police sergeant went on. ‘In a few days’ time, a week at the most. If you could see your way clear to stay till then.’

‘Aren’t there friends they could go to?’ I said. ‘Surely they won’t stay in the hotel.’

The sergeant slid his cap back on his head and stood looking up and down the street, rubbing thoughtfully at the red mark from his hatband.

‘Well, Cardonness Castle is all shut up, madam, seeing Sir William’s away to London as usual in the springtime, and Lady Ardwell is practically bedridden since last winter, poor old lady. There’s always Commander Cochrane at Ruscoe, I suppose, but I don’t know if they’ve ever met.’

‘No, quite, of course,’ I said, before he ran through the whole county. Perhaps, after all, the anonymity of a country pub would be preferable to an invalid lady or Sir William’s dustsheets. I should stay. After all, Lena had an investigation and inquiry to get through and apparently no one around to help her do it.

‘And yourself, sir?’ said the sergeant, turning back to Alec.

‘Has anyone sent word to Edinburgh yet?’ Alec said. ‘Someone will have to tell her father.’

My bags were duly carried from the motor car into the inn and up to a small back bedroom. I assumed Lena and Clemence were already in the best rooms, but I was glad of the plain whitewashed walls and the brass bed with its cheerful quilt; my sense of guilt would not have withstood any luxury.

Before facing the Duffys again, I went to the post office to send a telegram to Hugh. I might have telephoned of course, but not wanting to enter into negotiations, certainly not wanting to bring on a command to come home, I thought a telegram would be more fitting.

The girl behind the desk was weeping.

‘Poor, poor soul,’ she said, shaking her head and letting large tears fall on to the blotter. I bit my lip and nodded. Then she sniffed and composed herself a little, looking expectantly at me through the grille with her pen at the ready.

‘I have no idea what to say,’ I said. I had never read one of these telegrams, thank heavens, and had no idea how they were usually couched.

‘Who is it for, madam?’ asked the girl, professionalism beginning to reassert.

‘Oh, no one,’ I said. ‘I mean, my husband. But no one close. To them, I mean. I just need to say that I’m staying to be with Mrs Duffy and why.’

She had got my measure.

‘“Dreadful fire at Reiver’s Rest,”’ she intoned with relish. ‘“Poor” – it’s Cara, isn’t it, madam? – “Poor Cara tragically lost. Staying in Gatehouse to comfort poor mother.”’ And so on. It became clear that the telegram was not her natural genre, but I managed in the end to remove most of the adverbs and settle on ‘perished’ as an acceptable midway point between her eulogies and my apparently shocking bluntness.

‘Fire at Duffys’ cott. Cara perished. Self unharmed. At Murray Arms Inn, Gatehouse with Mrs D. until further notice.’ She read back to me. ‘Love?’ she asked, pen quivering.

‘Love,’ I agreed, for a quiet life.

There was no sign of the Duffys in the parlour when I returned. The tea-things were gone and the table covered in what must be its usual garb of a dusty chenille cloth and a bowl of wax fruit. I crept along to the bar but, my nerve failing me at the door, decided to search out someone in the kitchen quarters.

‘There now,’ said the landlady, suddenly coming round a corner and almost bumping into me. ‘I wondered where you had got yourself to, madam. The doctor wants to see you.’ She surveyed me briefly and then pronounced her verdict. ‘You’re done in. What say you come and sit in my kitchen and wait for him there? That parlour’s a gloomy spot at the best of times.’ She steered me along the passageway and into the kitchen where the fresh smell of linen sheets drying off on a rack before the fire fought with the aroma of tonight’s stew beginning to bubble, the whole making a welcome oasis of comfort. She tucked me into a Windsor chair and set about tea.

‘I’m that glad you’re back,’ she said. ‘They just went to pieces. After you and the young man left. Jim Cairns left them for two minutes to come and speak to me and when he went back they had gone straight to pieces. Couldn’t say which was worse. The poor mother roaring and crying and the young one shaking all over like nothing on earth. And so he goes for you, Jim Cairns, and I sends the lad for the doctor to see can he give them something and gets them off upstairs to lie down and as soon as these sheets are aired they’ll be in their beds where they should be and maybe get some rest, eh?’

She sounded as relieved as I felt that the ladies had finally begun to behave as they ought, and she looked hopefully at me to see if I was about to break down too.

‘I don’t really know them all that well,’ I said, in my defence. ‘I just happened to be coming down on a visit.’

‘And a very good thing, madam,’ she said, putting a thick cup of dark tea down before me on the table. ‘Now, I’ll just need to get on if that’s all right.’ She sat down opposite me with a bowl of carrots and spread a newspaper for the scrapings. Soon a light spray of carrot juice reached me as she set about them and since my tweeds were flecked with orange and it was rather refreshing, I let it.

After a while we heard the stairs over our heads creak with a heavy step descending and presently a large man, in the rather collapsed tweeds so universally associated with the country doctor that one suspects there must be an outfitter somewhere supplying them, let himself into the kitchen.

‘Mrs Gilver?’ he asked, putting out his hand and taking mine. ‘Dr Milne.’ He sat heavily and shook his head a few times before speaking again. ‘I’ve settled them and left them something. A hot bath and a good night’s rest, Mrs McCall. You’ll can do more for the poor ladies than I can tonight.’ Mrs McCall abandoned her carrots without another word and, wiping her hands on her apron, she gathered up the sheets and left.

‘And you’ll stay, won’t you?’ he asked, once she had gone.

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘But you know, I’m not a
close
friend. I wonder if perhaps we should send for someone else.’

‘Mrs Duffy asked for you,’ he said. ‘More than once, she asked if Mrs Gilver was still here.’ This was curious.

‘What is going to happen?’ I asked. ‘And what did happen? Does anyone know?’

‘Well, there will be an inquiry,’ said Dr Milne. ‘But we’ll never know exactly. These wooden houses, you know. I never could understand why houses by the sea are so often made of wood. They dry out like kindling in the sea breeze.’

‘Is Mrs Duffy able to tell you anything?’ I said. ‘Or Clemence?’

‘Not a thing. They weren’t there. They had gone for a walk on the shore and the young lady stayed at home. Writing letters, they said. By the time they came back round the headland, the place was alight and the men were already there with their buckets. Futile. Futile. These wooden houses.’

‘Awful,’ I said. ‘One can’t imagine. And now an inquiry.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that,’ said the doctor. ‘Our Fiscal is a good man. A very gentle way with him. There’s a hard road ahead of the whole family, to be sure, but there will be no unpleasantness at the inquiry to make it worse.’

‘It was a curious thing,’ I ventured, ‘but when Mr Osborne and I arrived, they were so very calm I thought for a minute they didn’t know. And I’m afraid I must have confused them.’

‘Aye, I heard,’ he said. ‘Jim Cairns told me. I shouldn’t worry, though, madam. Shock is a funny one. Why, I saw things in the war you wouldn’t believe.’

‘Yes, I’m sure,’ I said, and sipped my tea in silence, uncertain whether the thought which had just struck me was my imagination or not. Did he too think that something was not right? There was a watchful and repressive air about him. Was he warning me that ‘the Fiscal’ would never dream of rocking a boatful of such distinguished ladies? That I should be careful not to either? Or was he right about shock, and Alec quite wrong? I was suddenly convinced that this was the case, and I flushed with shame at the thought of our muckraking. Wicked, repulsive. Poor Mrs Duffy and poor Clemence too; bewildered, so hurt and shocked that they had retreated into a kind of a stupor and all we could do in the meantime was point our fingers and suspect them of something we did not even have the courage to put a name to. Everyone in this village was weeping in sorrow along with them except for their so-called friends. At least Alec had an excuse: he was in shock too, however much he protested. But me? My behaviour? My suspicions? It was too disgusting, and I would have no further part in any of it. The silly misunderstanding about the diamonds – I had forgotten about the diamonds, to be honest – could all be resolved by Daisy without my help.

Chapter Six

The days which followed, while we waited for the inquiry, passed not quickly exactly – there was no rush or bustle about them, nothing at all to do in fact – but rather they passed elsewhere, as though I were asleep and only dreaming the meals and baths and walks and the endless overheard conversations of the townspeople about the shocking thing which had happened in their midst.

‘Obliterated,’ I heard an apronned housewife say to her neighbour as they met at the kerb, pouring out used buckets of floor-water.

‘Pulverized,’ was one word that rose out of the chorus of voices of the schoolchildren dawdling home across the bridge.

‘All away to ash,’ the waitress was saying to a customer as I opened the tea-shop door and entered.

Mr Duffy arrived from Edinburgh but, although he spent considerable time closeted with Alec, he took his meals upstairs in Lena’s rooms with her and Clemence and so I hardly saw him.

I
was still too shame-faced to want to spend much time with Alec, who in any case was lodging at the Angel around the corner, the Duffys and I having almost exhausted the accommodations of the Murray Arms.

Clemence kept to her room apart from venturing down to the parlour to read once or twice, sitting with
Emma
held up right in front of her face. Perfectly reserved, she managed to rebuff any comfort offered, not only my rather awkward advances, but also the doughty cluckings of the landlady, Mrs McCall, who was far too good a woman to let it show, but who I am sure was puzzled by Clemence almost to the point of irritation. Poor Clemence, to be so very unbeguiling to all, and for no reason that one could ever put one’s finger on.

Mrs Duffy, so Mrs McCall told me, did not rise from her bed again and Dr Milne became worried about her, we thought, descending the stairs shaking his head and puffing upwards into his moustache. Strangely, despite my hardly setting eyes on either of the ladies, Dr Milne insisted I stay, continuing to report that Mrs Duffy wanted me there, and this puzzled me. I am not used to thinking of myself as such a tower of strength and comfort that my very presence in the same building can be such a help.

One immediately noticeable effect of Cara’s death that should be reported is that it quashed the nasty feeling of dread I had been suffering. Wretched as I was – and I did suffer to think of her smiling mouth and soft eyes never to be seen again – I was nevertheless at peace. Besides, as the sergeant had predicted, matters moved on apace; not even the fact of the body’s total destruction stood in the way of officialdom and the inquiry was fixed for Friday.

When that day came, Dr Milne sought me out in the parlour after his morning call on Mrs Duffy. I rang for an extra coffee cup and he sat opposite, sipping meditatively and watching me.

‘She wants to talk to you,’ he said at last. ‘And I must say that’s a relief, for I was beginning to worry that she might withdraw altogether, and then there’s no saying how long it would take.’

‘Certainly,’ I said, quailing inside but not showing it. ‘I shall go to her directly.’ As much as I dreaded an interview with Lena, it at least made me feel a bit less foolish and useless.