The Christie Affair (33 page)

Dubious, Miss Barnard returned her eyes to the picture, then back to Agatha. ‘Well,’ she said, half convinced, ‘I do hope they find the poor lady alive. Seems unlikely at this point, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes indeed,’ Chilton said.

Agatha, absent her stack of books, had already turned and headed for the door. Chilton gathered everything – including my Galsworthy – and bade goodbye to the librarian.

‘You’re certainly not cut out for this,’ he scolded, when he caught up with Agatha outside. ‘Not much of a poker player either, I would suppose.’

‘Did you see that headline? My photograph?
The Great Hunt?
How can I ever go back? How can I ever face the world again?’ She covered her face with gloved hands, then stepped forwards and pressed the crown of her head against Chilton’s chest. He wasn’t much taller than she so she had to stoop to do so. Chilton lifted his arm to hold her and the books clattered to the ground. From where they stood, he could see the librarian, standing in the window, watching them.

‘Agatha,’ he said.

She stepped back and they kneeled together to pick up the books.

‘Will you drive me back to the manor?’ she said. ‘I don’t feel fit to do it myself.’

Chilton cranked up the Bentley while Agatha settled in the passenger seat. Miss Oliver’s coat smelled like rosewater. The Bentley was too large for Agatha’s taste. How she missed her own little car. She thought of it left in so precarious a spot and hoped it was all right. She hoped that some good soul – Archie, even – had pushed it back onto the road and driven it home where it belonged. When she was a girl, in the tidal wave of financial wreckage following her father’s death – and the other
times in her life, early in her marriage, for example, when the spectre of money troubles loomed, her mother-in-law’s warnings bearing out, numbers not properly arranging themselves in the ledger – what if someone had told her then that one day, she herself would make enough money, by her own hands, to purchase such a thing: her dear Morris Cowley? Would she ever see it again? Was it worth leaving it behind, along with everything else – Teddy – to never have to face the questions the whole world would ask if she reappeared?

When Chilton got behind the wheel she said, ‘I can’t bear going home and facing the world. But how can I do anything else? The more time they spend looking for me, the worse it will be. You should drive me to police headquarters straight away. Just end this whole thing here and now.’

‘I don’t find myself able to do that. Not yet.’

So many police, so many people, discharged in the search for her. What luck, that such a lovely one had been successful. She reached over and grabbed Chilton’s hand. ‘I don’t like romances,’ she said. ‘They ring false to me. Especially when people meet and fall in love at a glance.’

‘What about several glances?’

She laughed and let go of his hand. They both sat and stared out the windscreen for several minutes. Then she said, ‘She’s still watching. The librarian. You’d better drive.’

Back at the Bellefort I had not gone upstairs to lie down, as I’d told Chilton, but only to change my clothes. Having made an appearance at the hotel, assuring the general public of my remaining presence in the world, I escaped from it again almost at once. The day had warmed. The rain had lifted.
Solvitur ambulando
. When I reached the Timeless Manor’s drive I ran the length of it.

‘Look what I found,’ Finbarr said, meeting me on the lawn outside, as if he’d known I would come straight back. It was a tennis net, rackets and balls. He set it up and we played two sets, me winning them both handily.

A big black car came sputtering up the drive. I lifted my hand to shade my eyes. There in the driver’s seat sat Mr Chilton. All the workings of my body halted. No breath to my lungs or blood from my heart. Agatha had been found. Was Chilton here to arrest Finbarr? All of us, for trespassing? Worst of all, regardless of what happened next, would this time come to an abrupt end, all of us returning to life as it had been unspooling?

Instead, Finbarr called out, as the two of them emerged from the automobile. Cheerful as you please, as if he’d known the man for ages, he said, ‘Do you play, Mr Chilton?’

And Chilton said, absolutely casual, ‘I did once or twice before the war. Afraid I’m a bit of a liability now.’ He indicated his bad arm.

‘It’s just for fun,’ Finbarr said.

Chilton nodded. He looked at me as though he’d fully expected to find me here. ‘Hello, Miss O’Dea.’ He pronounced the
Miss
pointedly.

‘I haven’t got an eye for balls,’ Agatha said. ‘I never had.’ Still, she went upstairs to change back into her men’s clothes. Finbarr, Chilton and I stood on the grass. I wanted to ask Chilton when he’d discovered Agatha, but something silenced me. I didn’t want to say anything, lest I break whatever spell allowed this to happen – all of us discovered, and yet not ruined. I felt a burst of love for Chilton, that he had found her and yet apparently had no intention of alerting the world.

‘It’s rather magical here,’ I said, instead of posing any questions.

‘Indeed it is,’ Chilton agreed.

Agatha returned. Since I was the best player, I took Chilton as my partner. For once I held back on my need to win, letting Chilton swing at balls I could easily have reached. Despite her disclaimer, Agatha played quite nicely. All the upper-crust girls were passable at tennis. The four of us played while our hands reddened and chapped along with our cheeks. But the same magic that brought us all here together without spelling disaster seemed to keep us warm enough, half-dead tennis balls tossed in the air, scores called out, the pop and whack of slicing rackets.

How long did we play? How does one measure time in a place where time has vanished? At some point the shaggy dog from down the road leaped out from the bushes. He stole our ball in mid play, running off with it, and though we could easily have given it up for lost Finbarr and I re-enacted our youth by chasing after him, calling to him, running in mad circles until the dog tired and dropped the ball at Finbarr’s feet. The two of us collapsed in a laughing heap, ruffling the dog’s fur and letting him lick our chins. Finbarr scooped up the ball and stood.

‘Make a wish.’

He could see from my face. I knew how this game worked. You can declare a wish granted but that doesn’t make it so. He dropped the ball, the laughter gone. Finbarr’s magic powers had their limits, and they were fatal ones. I looked off, into the trees, not ready to face the broken spell.

By the time we thought to look around us, Agatha and Chilton were gone.

In silent agreement they had walked up to the top floor, where Agatha lay down on the bed she hadn’t bothered to make that morning, used as she was to someone else performing that task. Chilton rekindled the fire, then lay down beside her. She did not object. Nothing real existed. It was a span out of time. No consequences. She acknowledged what she ought to be feeling – the rekindled romance between Finbarr and me could represent her road back to Archie. Instead, she felt something different and altogether more liberating.

She could allow herself to kiss Chilton. She could allow him to remove her clothes, and she could even assist him with the garments that required more than one hand. She could take him inside her and enjoy it immensely. If she became pregnant and went back to Archie, she could pass the child off as his and that would serve him right. If she became pregnant and Chilton disappeared from her life, and she and Archie divorced, her marriage would still protect her, as would her money, the living she was quite capable of making on her own. Among Agatha’s enviable qualities, perhaps the most significant was her ability to thrive in this man’s world. Following the rules but managing also to rise above them.

Her new novel was coming out in one month. As aghast as the headlines made her, in the new flat calm of throwing aside all social mores she allowed herself to think, how many more people will recognize my name, now, when they see
The Big Four
in a bookshop’s window? Curiosity so often amounted to money spent.

But that was a secondary point of thought. The main point was this bubble, away from every ordinary concern.

A while later, when Chilton lay staring at the ceiling and Agatha lay naked in his arms, several thick blankets piled on top of them, he said, ‘I have to ask. You’ve told me Miss O’Dea is your husband’s mistress.’

‘Yes.’ A small sigh. Nobody wanted the past or world at large to intrude on such a moment.

‘But that’s not the only point of connection. Is it?’

‘No,’ she said frankly. ‘Miss O’Dea is my husband’s mistress because she believes my daughter belongs to her.’

And so she told Chilton everything Finbarr had told her, about my time in Ireland, and how it all ended.

Here Lies Sister Mary

M
Y LITTLE GIRL
was born on 5 August 1919 at the county hospital in Cork City. They say first children come slow and hard, but not mine. A few hours, that’s all. Susanna had warned me I wouldn’t get stitched afterwards – punishment wherever it could be found was encouraged for the girls from Sunday’s Corner, even at hospital – but the midwife who attended me was kind. She had green eyes and freckles that reminded me of my mother and Colleen. Nothing in the way she treated me indicated she knew where I’d come from, though certainly she did know, from my short hair and grey uniform, not to mention the desperation with which I reached for my child, as if I’d never be allowed to hold her again.

‘What will you name her, then?’ the midwife asked, so gently I could believe whatever name I chose would stand forever.

‘Genevieve,’ I whispered, running my fingers down her tiny nose, flattened from her battle into the world. We memorized each other’s faces as she nursed for the first time.
A mother is a mother still, the holiest thing alive.

‘Will you send a letter for me?’ I whispered to the midwife. At the same time sifting through my options since Sister Mary
Clare’s letter to Finbarr hadn’t worked. My mother. Megs or Louisa. Aunt Rosie.

The midwife’s face darkened with sadness. ‘Hold your baby, sweetness,’ she said, by way of saying no. ‘Give her all the love you can.’

And so I did, all the ten glorious days I lay in at the hospital. There was a cot beside my bed, but Genevieve didn’t occupy it a single time. Instead, we slept cradled together, the scent of colostrum and then milk wafting from her lips as she exhaled her tiny, contented breath across my chin.