Sweet Sorrow (31 page)

Verity nodded her agreement.

‘Do you remember when we first went to Heron’s house, we thought it smelt stale and unpleasant?’ Edward continued, putting on his pyjamas. ‘That must have been because he was brewing his poison gas in the cellar.’

Verity shuddered. ‘And the hospital boiler suit we found in the Silence Room . . . He was being treated for cancer so he would have had no difficulty stealing it.’

‘And, as churchwarden, he’d have a key to the church so he would have no trouble hiding the bloodied axe in the belfry. You know, V, he had me fooled at the beginning. I really thought he had been framed.’

‘And that was exactly what he wanted you to think. I hate the man and I’m glad he’s dead. I never want to think about him again. I still can’t believe that he could cause such grief to his own niece – a girl he should have loved and protected . . . He was wicked.’

‘Well, come to bed, my darling, and I’ll try to distract you from brooding about all that beastliness.’

There were now only a very few days before Verity was due to leave for France. She tried to put behind her the violent deaths of Byron Gates and Frieda Burrowes. There would be more deaths and worse deaths to come, she knew. She had more important things to worry about.

She spent two days in London at the
New Gazette
conferring with the editor and trying to get a firm grip on the quickly moving international crisis. Edward found himself alone with Mrs Brendel and Basil for company. He tried to make the best of it but missed Verity even before she had left for Paris. At Leonard’s insistence, he had replaced Heron as ARP representative for the area, which at least kept him occupied, and he embarked on Trollope’s ‘Palliser ’ novels which, he hoped, would last him out the war. Adrian and Charlotte Hassel saw him most days, and Leonard and Virginia almost as frequently, so, as he often told himself, he had nothing to complain about.

Mark Redel was back home painting, seemingly none the worse for his attempted suicide – indeed, he was rather more cheerful than before. Edward bought the self-portrait and also two of his small landscapes. Better still for his self-esteem, Mark had been approached by another Bond Street gallery interested in representing him. He and Edward forged an unlikely but genuine friendship despite having very little in common. Edward overcame his distaste for pubs and he and Mark met most days for lunch at the Abergavenny Arms where they ate bread and cheese washed down with a pint or two of the local brew.

Edward desperately wanted to contact the Foreign Office to find out when he was to join HMS
Kelly
to fetch home the Duke of Windsor but restrained himself. He knew that men of his age were pulling every string they could think of to find a job, in or out of uniform, and making a thorough nuisance of themselves. He also knew that the war would not be a short one – no one thought it would be over by Christmas as they had in 1914. There would be plenty of time to find his place in the great effort that the country would be called upon to make if it was to defeat Nazi Germany.

At last, the time came for Verity to leave. She had declined a farewell party, thinking it inappropriate, but Leonard and Virginia insisted on hosting a dinner in her honour and to wish her luck. Virginia was still not herself. The murders, Heron’s attempt on her life and the coming war had all combined to make her more than usually nervous and depressed. However, the evening was a success, though Verity was hardly able to eat. Whenever she was excited or nervous, her stomach closed up and she lost her appetite. She longed to smoke but, remembering that the doctors had made it clear that cigarettes would be the worst thing for her health, she had promised Edward she would not.

Whenever Edward looked at Basil, he silently blessed him for nosing out the horror which Heron had prepared for her, even though it had cost him his own health. With her weak lungs, Verity might easily have succumbed to just a breath or two of poison gas.

The gas Heron had cooked up in his makeshift laboratory had been identified as a chlorine-based chemical. It was the type which he had seen used to such devastating effect when he had served at the front. The stinking yellow smoke had killed and maimed so many in the trenches. Heavier than air, it lay low over the battlefield of Ypres in 1915, a miasma of death. That Heron had tried to use it on innocent civilians seemed to Edward evidence of the derangement that war always brings in its wake.

The night before Verity left, they made long lingering love and, satisfied, fell into a deep sleep in each other’s arms. Verity was woken about four by the sound of creaking floorboards. She disentangled herself from Edward who was snoring gently, and immediately thought of the ghost which Leonard had told them haunted the Old Vicarage. She remembered with relief that it was a friendly ghost. She lay rigid as she heard a scratching on the bedroom door and then the creak as it was pushed open. She listened to the pad, pad of footsteps across the wooden floor and jumped as she felt a damp nose on her hand. It was Basil, of course. It seemed he could not sleep and had come to his mistress for comfort.

‘You know you are not allowed upstairs, Basil,’ she whispered, trying to sound cross. He coughed and immediately she felt conscience-stricken. Basil had saved her life and shortened his own in the process. How dare she be cross with him? She sat up and stroked him – he was so big she could fondle him without moving and waking Edward. ‘Lie down and try to sleep,’ she instructed him. ‘I love you.’

Basil appeared to understand for he collapsed on the rug with a sigh and almost immediately began to snore. Verity lay awake for a few minutes, soothed by a gentle susurration of snores from man and dog. She was lying between the two living things she loved most in the world and the sound of their breathing comforted her. At last she, too, slept but her dreams were all of missing trains and losing luggage and people. She was up at six to shower and sort through her things for the hundredth time.

Basil had gone downstairs ahead of her and they breakfasted together, enjoying being alone and having the chance to say goodbye to one another. It was nine before Edward padded into the kitchen, yawning, to make himself a cup of coffee. Seeing Verity and Basil both looking distraught, he quickly came over to hug them.

‘It’ll be all right,’ he said meaninglessly. But how could anyone know it would be ‘all right’, he wondered? ‘It’ll be all right,’ he repeated, hoping that somehow his empty words would comfort her.

Verity had forbidden Edward to drive her to Croydon where she was to catch her flight to Paris. She told him she loved him too much to bear it.

‘Best to say our goodbyes here,’ she said, stroking his face. ‘What was that poem you read me yesterday which made me cry? “Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part.” I’ll get the train and it’ll save a long, painful farewell which will do neither of us any good. I want, as I board that plane, to imagine you with Basil on the downs – the peace, the fresh air and the sound of the wind in the trees. I shall know you will be thinking of me and it will give me the strength to go forward. We have had some happy times together, haven’t we?’

‘And will again,’ Edward said fervently.

‘If I believed in God, I would thank Him for it but, since I don’t, I must thank you, my dear,’ she said, kissing him.

At eleven Edward, with a heavy heart but trying to look and sound cheerful, prepared to drive her to the station. Her luggage – and in the end there wasn’t much of it – was loaded into the Lagonda. Charlotte and Adrian had come to see her off but had tactfully left Edward and Verity together in the house to say their final goodbyes in private. They stood in the hall and looked at each other, suddenly at a loss for words. When would they meet again? was the unspoken question. Verity wiped away a tear. Edward held open his arms and she came to him as bravely as she could.

‘
Nunc dimittis
’, he said in her ear, and his voice betrayed him.

She put a finger to his lips. ‘If you dare say anything about parting being such sweet sorrow, I promise you I will dissolve into a puddle on the floor. We have said everything and not even your beloved Shakespeare can say it better.’

Edward managed a smile and let her go. ‘I shall say not another word, I promise you,’ he managed.

‘Then come, husband,’ she said, smiling up at him, and together they walked out into the sunlit garden.

Note

Virginia Woolf drowned herself in the River Ouse on 28 March 1941.

For those interested in the dangerous sport of night climbing,
The Night Climbers of Cambridge
by ‘Whipplesnaith’, first published in 1937 and republished in 2007 by Oleander Press, is essential reading. It recounts the courageous – or foolhardy – nocturnal exploits of a group of students who climbed King’s College Chapel among many other university and city buildings and whose exploits prefigure the modern urban sport of ‘Free Running’.

I am most grateful to Richard Reynolds at Heffers for bringing the book to my attention and reading my ‘Cambridge’ chapters.

And finally, in September 1939 it was Randolph Churchill – not Lord Edward Corinth – who was ordered to board HMS
Kelly
(Lord Louis Mountbatten commanding) at Portsmouth and proceed to Cherbourg to bring the Duke and Duchess of Windsor back to England.