Dying in the Wool (15 page)

‘Hector!’

We practically collided. He pulled off his hat and beamed at me.

‘Just the person I wanted to see. Do you have moment, Hector? Could we find a spot to have a chat?’

He looked alarmed. ‘What about?’

‘About the time Mr Braithwaite went missing?’

He spotted a young man on the other side of the street and waved. ‘So sorry. I’d love to but I’m here to meet my best man and there he is. There’s not much I can say about that time anyway, nothing Tabby can’t tell you. She got home from the VAD whenever time allowed. She’d come home to visit her parents and was ever so concerned about her Aunt Catherine. Sorry to be rude, must fly.’

He replaced his hat, saw a gap in the traffic and made to cross the street.

‘Why was she concerned about her aunt?’

He called back to me as he stepped off the pavement. ‘Poor Catherine was so very ill.’

Thursday, 17 August 1916

STODDARD

Catherine lay back, propped on her pillows. He had noticed that for other people his wife willed herself into attention. Afterwards she would slump, exhausted.

Evelyn Braithwaite, wearing a blue linen dress, her hair wound into a loose knot, sat by the bed. She held a heavy cluster of tomatoes in her hands, nine growing from a single stem.

Catherine looked at them. ‘You’ve brought me the vine.’

Evelyn placed the tomatoes on the white candlewick counterpane. ‘Smell that,’ she said to Catherine. ‘They’re the first to ripen.’

Stoddard hated the rank tomcat smell of new tomatoes. He watched as Catherine touched the red fruit with great tenderness, her thin fingers testing the hard green stem.

‘You’ve brought me summer.’ The tomato vine slid from Catherine’s hand. She looked across to the window at a square of sky.

It was almost seven o’clock in the evening. The sun would be over Laithstone Hill. Stoddard wanted to go running on the fells, feeling the wind behind him, the earth solid under his feet. He wanted to run back in time to a simpler world – before war, profiteering, before this
cruel illness gripped his wife. There was time to run. Run in the light, run in the dark, no difference to Stoddard. He knew the lie of the land as well as the lines on Catherine’s ravaged face.

He had almost not entered the sick room, thinking to leave the women alone. Now he stepped up to the bed and picked up the vine. He placed it on the washstand.

‘I’m all right,’ Catherine said. ‘You go for your run.’

‘Yes, leave us to praise junket,’ Evelyn said. ‘I’ve brought a dish, made half an hour ago. Will you taste some, Catherine? It might give you strength.’

‘I’ll try.’

Catherine would always try, Stoddard thought. She would try, and try and try.

He could barely move from the spot. Sometimes he would look at Catherine and forget to breathe. Strength. We placed such store on strength, Stoddard thought. Build yourself up. Take a cup of tea. Pull yourself together. Face the world. Get a bit of backbone. But what if you did all of those things, and none of it availed?

The spoon travelled to Catherine’s mouth. The junket should have slithered down her throat but seemed not to know that.

‘That’s it,’ Evelyn said. ‘Do you remember the day I bought this dress material?’ She held the spoon again.

Catherine turned her head away, very slightly and Stoddard thought she was refusing, that she had decided to eat no more. But she said, in that flat way her words came out now, ‘I spotted that material. The day we went to Brown Muffs.’

‘You did. You said it would suit me.’

‘I’ll leave you alone to chat,’ Stoddard said.

Now was his time to go running.

But he couldn’t bring himself to leave the house. That morning’s paper lay on the dining table. He began to read news of the war, but the words did not connect with that
part of his brain that made sense of things.

The music holder on the piano held Catherine’s sheet music – the last tune she had played – some nonsense about a little girl in blue. He slapped the music into the piano stool and folded the holder back into the top of the piano.

Sitting down at the dining table, he picked up the morning paper, glancing at headings. The King meets President Poincaré, pays a surprise visit to soldiers, Russians make Great Move Forward.

Well, good for them, someone needed to move.

Evelyn came downstairs. She sat opposite him at the table. ‘The nurse is with her now.’

‘I’m glad you’ve come, Eve.’ He folded the newspaper and set it aside. ‘Catherine perks up for you.’

‘I knew she’d remember this dress.’ She leaned forward, elbows on the table, hands lightly clasped. ‘We’re turning out to be an unfortunate family, Neville.’

‘Like many others.’

‘I suppose.’

‘Will you have tea?’

‘I’d prefer something stronger.’

Evelyn was the only woman he knew who drank Scotch. He poured from the decanter – two stiff ones. ‘Water?’

‘No.’

She sipped at her whisky. ‘Has Joshua said anything to you?’

‘What about?’

Not the damn dyestuffs again. Every time Stoddard went to the Wool Exchange, he felt the envy and anger. Joshua pooh-poohed his scruples, saying everyone was at it.

‘None of that money went into the firm did it?’ Evelyn asked.

‘What money?’

‘Oh stop it Neville! From the German dyewares. You know what I’m talking about.’

‘No. He kept that separate.’

‘When are we due a board meeting?’

‘I’d have to look at the diary.’

‘Talk to him would you, Neville? Tell him you’re drawing up the agenda and so on. Try and find out what he’s up to.’

‘We usually do the agenda the week before.’

‘Arthur Wilson’s on the grumble about not being properly compensated for his invention.’

Stoddard folded the newspaper carefully. ‘First I’ve heard. He and Joshua sorted it out between them.’

‘We can’t afford to lose Wilson.’

‘Wilson won’t go anywhere. Where did you hear this anyway?’

‘Lizzie Kellett if you must know.’

‘Eve! Half the congregation is consulting that meddling woman, crossing her palm with silver. People accuse mill owners of war profiteering. What about her?’

‘Yes well this wasn’t a message from beyond. Marjorie Wilson told Lizzie that Arthur Wilson feels aggrieved. Apparently Joshua gave him an outright payment for his invention and he wants royalties on any future sales. He’s saying that Kellett made a small fortune from peddling German dyewares.’

‘One has got nothing to do with the other.’

‘He says an honest man should be fairly treated. He wants his name on the invention.’

‘Well then, let Wilson put up the cash to develop it. We’ve all on keeping pace with producing khaki.’

Evelyn slid her glass across the table for a top-up.

‘You don’t know what it’s like living with a teetotaller. You were very fortunate to arrive in Bridgestead when you were past the age of being harangued into signing the pledge.’

He refilled their glasses, and gave up on the idea of running on the fells tonight. ‘Don’t worry. Joshua’s distracted. Each of you is trying to cope as best you can in
your own way. And don’t let Lizzie Kellett get you in her clutches. It’s cruel of her to make out she can get messages from the other side.’

Evelyn shook her head dismissively. She gazed into her glass. ‘Don’t fuss about me falling for Lizzie Luck’s nonsense. I went to keep Tabitha company the last time she was home.’

‘Tabby should know better.’

‘All girls want to know the future – especially now. Will any of them have a future, that’s the question. She’s expecting that chap of hers to be back home shortly with God only knows what sort of wounds.’

Stoddard frowned. Now she had stepped on his lay preacher’s toes. He didn’t like God to be evoked in connection with the war.

She waved the glass under her nose, savouring its aroma.

‘Joshua’s been so secretive. He went off somewhere last weekend. He took the motorbike and sidecar.’

‘Let him. It will be all right.’

She didn’t believe him, he could see that.

She drained her glass and stood up to leave.

In the doorway, he put a hand on her shoulder.

‘Everything will be all right for you, and for Joshua and for Tabitha. I’ll see to that. You have my word, Eve.’

When he saw her out, she unexpectedly kissed his cheek.

‘I nearly said something so stupid, Neville.’

He could smell her hair. ‘What was that?’ he asked softly.

‘That Catherine was lucky – to have you, I meant.’

‘It’s not luck, Eve. The lord takes the ones he loves best and he’s chosen Catherine. Perhaps she’s to find Edmund and bring him to peace.’

‘Now who’s sounding like Lizzie Luck?’

If anyone else said that to him, Stoddard would have exploded into a sermon. But for Evelyn, he had immense patience, immense forbearing.

I sat at Tabitha’s dressing table, looking at myself and at Tabitha behind me. Wearing a loose gymnasium suit, she moved through a series of postures. A sharp scent of vinegar wafted from her. Climbing onto a footstool, wand in her hands, she stepped from foot to foot, raising the wand above her head.

‘Do I stink of vinegar?’ She had laced her tepid bath with aromatic vinegar prior to exercising, as advised in the magazine article.

‘Only slightly,’ I said kindly.

‘Try that cream,’ she ordered. ‘A wrinkle on the face is like a crinkle in a piece of tissue paper. You’ll easily smooth it out.’

Cautiously, I dipped my finger into the home-made face cream. It had a pleasant, flowery aroma. ‘What is it?’

‘Becky makes it. What is it, Becky?’

Becky left off laying dresses on Tabitha’s bed and with a solemn manner came to stand beside me. ‘You take an eggshell of mutton tallow, warm over water in a double boiler, half as much of sweet almond oil, and scent with five drops of rose geranium. Best put on at night, but I’m sure it’ll work. You don’t have a lot of wrinkles, Mrs Shackleton, just a few from laughing. Unfair that. You have to laugh.’

When she said that, I did laugh. There was something absurd about the intensity of these preparations for an evening at the Gawthorpes. But Tabitha felt uneasy about meeting Hector’s relations. She had begged me to set
aside any thoughts of detection today, so as to give her moral support.

‘What will you wear tonight?’ Tabitha asked when Becky disappeared on an errand.

I had brought in my Delphos robe and picked it up to show her. It’s a simple tunic of pleated silk, in gorgeous colours that you wouldn’t think to mix: turquoise, purple and orange.

‘Kate, it’s stunning! I have a shawl that will go with that perfectly.’

‘Aunt Berta bought this in Paris in 1908.’ I always mean not to tell people the history of my peculiar wardrobe, and then I blurt it out.

‘That’s amazing.’ She stroked the gown. ‘Paris seeps through my fingertips.’

‘Really I could have done with buying something new for her birthday party next week. My other evening gown is black and I’ve strict instructions from my mother not to wear it.’

Tabitha held the dress against her and looked at herself in the cheval mirror. ‘I’d love to wear your Delphos. Why don’t we do a swap for tonight? And if there’s something of mine you like, you can take it to London.’

‘What a good idea!’ I had been wondering how I would fit in a shopping trip and now I wouldn’t need to. We looked at Tabitha’s selection of evening gowns. Eventually, I chose a satin ankle-length barrel-shaped dress in two shades of blue, narrow at the bottom but with a centre vent to the knee so that with a bit of luck I wouldn’t trip and break my neck.

That settled, Tabitha sat down to watch me apply the wrinkle-vanishing cream, a thoughtful look on her face as she scrutinised me. ‘You look about twenty-six. How old do I look, Kate? Tell me the truth. They’re all going to be looking at me tonight, totting up the age difference between me and Hector.’

It wasn’t so much that Tabitha looked old, just that Hector was such a very young twenty-one.

‘You look younger than me, Tabby.’ I had no idea whether she did or not. It is difficult to say how old someone looks when you know very well they are your contemporary.

Her face lit up with pleasure. ‘Really? Thank you, Kate. It must be Becky’s cream that does it. Avoid your eyes.’

She watched me smooth in the cream. I replaced the lid carefully, wondering whether to speak my thoughts or stay silent. I took the plunge.

‘Are you sure about your feelings for Hector? Because if you are, a few years age difference doesn’t matter does it? Is he the one for you?’

She sighed. ‘I’m not sure of anything. When he’s not here, I love him no end. When we’re together, I still love him, but he is very sensitive. If he thinks he doesn’t have my one hundred per cent love and affection, he turns moody. Was your husband like that?’