The Death of Lucy Kyte (12 page)

8

She slept in the guest room for the next three nights, but her dreams followed her there. During the day, she tried to stick to a routine:
Claverhouse
in the morning, then a walk to the village and Hester's papers in the afternoon, but she found herself slipping earlier into Hester's world each day, as if reading obsessively about her life would somehow blot out the awful knowledge of her death. Four times she put her hand on the door to the boxroom, and four times she withdrew it until, after a while, she took to using the other staircase and avoided that end of the upper storey completely. She wrote a letter to her father, and found herself inventing a normality for her stay as she would an adventure for a novel, stretching out the mundane, domestic details of her life at the cottage, and writing far more than she would normally write as a distraction from the real news and how she felt about it. At night, she drank to sleep, only to wake again in the difficult early hours, troubled by things she could do nothing about. Alone, and with no one to fool, she cried more often than she had in years.

In the end, she wrote to Marta and asked if she could come to the cottage earlier than planned. She kept the letter casual, not wanting to cast a shadow on the visit when they saw each other so rarely, and relied on the simple truth of longing to see her. The answer came by return of post: Marta would be with her on Wednesday, and Josephine no longer cared that the cottage would not be as miraculously transformed by then as she had hoped. They needed nothing more, really, than clean sheets, a warm fire and plenty to eat and drink, and she woke on Wednesday morning with a sense of relief that she would not have to spend another night alone. She had sent Marta directions and told her to come straight to the house via the Stoke road. One of the blessings of a house at the end of the village was that visitors did not have to submit to any rigorous inspection from Elsie Gladding and her friends, something that Hester must have appreciated during the days when she entertained at Red Barn Cottage. For now, Josephine felt that she was novelty enough for the people of Polstead; asking their curiosity to cope with Marta as well might put too much of a strain on everyone.

The day dragged by, and she waited for her lover with the impatience of a child on Christmas Eve, busying herself with cooking and cleaning; by late afternoon, when she finally heard Marta's car, the cottage had never looked finer. Josephine went outside, soothed by a day that had involved nothing but the sort of domesticity she had written to her father about, and waved as the Morris bumped slowly down the track. In spite of everything, she was excited at the prospect of sharing the cottage with someone she loved while it was still so new to her, and she desperately wanted Marta to like it. The car negotiated the final pothole and drew up outside, and Josephine leaned over to give Marta a hug.

‘Well – it's nice to see you, too.' She pulled back and smiled at Josephine, pleased by the welcome. ‘I'm sorry I'm so late. I got hopelessly lost and had to ask in the village. The publican was very helpful.'

‘Yes, I imagine he was.' Josephine watched her get out of the car, and wondered if Marta's beauty would always silence her the way it did now. If Jenny Willis thought
she
was a threat to Bert's moral fibre, God help them all when she saw Marta. Perhaps it was wrong to be so frightened of anyone guessing the truth of their relationship: in a village where the men were historically susceptible to temptation, it might actually be a relief.

‘He even offered to bring me out here himself. I'm not sure what his wife thought about that, but it was a kind offer.'

‘Very kind,' Josephine said dryly. ‘I'm glad you didn't take him up on it. Who did you say you were?'

‘I didn't say I was anybody. You didn't warn me I was supposed to arrive in character.' She smiled mischievously. ‘They'll get used to it. The first six months are the worst. When I first started to stay with Lydia, the daily woman walked in while I was playing the piano and I had very little on. I didn't know whether to apologise or brazen it out, so I just carried on while she banged the tea down, fuming with moral outrage. I honestly thought she was going to hand her notice in there and then, but do you know what she said on her way out of the room? “Those bottom notes sound a bit flat, Miss. You ought to get that looked at.”'

The impression was finely judged, and Josephine laughed. ‘Luckily I don't play the piano.'

‘Then what is there to worry about? Come here.' Marta pulled her close, and Josephine felt a familiar mix of shyness, joy and desire. ‘This is absolutely beautiful,' Marta said, looking round. ‘From the landlady's reaction, I wasn't quite sure what I was going to find.'

‘Why? What did she say?'

‘That you'd be pleased to have some company, stuck out here on your own. I think her exact words were “in that godforsaken field”.' She pulled the rug off the back seat, and Josephine saw a haphazard collection of boxes and bottles, piled on top of a suitcase. ‘Let me get this stuff out of the car and then you can show me round.' She unloaded a hamper and a case of wine. ‘If it's anything like the villages I know, you'll be missing a few luxuries so I stopped off at Sudbury on the way.'

‘Just as well the publican
didn't
bring you over. He'd think we were setting up in competition.' Josephine picked up the hamper and Marta caught her arm. ‘What have you done to your hand?'

‘Oh, just burnt it on some steam. The kettle's seen better days. In fact, all Hester's kitchen facilities leave a lot to be desired.'

‘Fine by me if gin is easier than tea. I'm dying for a drink.'

When the luggage was inside, they walked round the cottage together and it did Josephine good to see it through Marta's eyes: filled with flowers from the garden, and with the evening sunlight streaming in through the windows, it was every bit as warm and welcoming as she had wanted it to be. For the first time, she was conscious of her own presence in what she still thought of as Hester's cottage, and, although they were simple things – her books laid out on the desk in the study, the preparations she had made for their evening meal – Josephine felt more at home than she had since she first got there.

‘I've got you a house-warming present. Hang on a minute.' Marta found the box she was looking for and Josephine opened it curiously. ‘I thought you might need some company occasionally, and this seemed more practical than a dog.' It was a portable gramophone and Josephine set it up on the table, delighted with the gift. Marta gestured apologetically to the large stack of records that came with it. ‘While I was in the shop, I realised that I have absolutely no idea what sort of music you like, so I bought a selection. There are some play recordings there, too, just in case you're bored with that melodrama stuff you've been talking about.'

‘You have no idea how welcome this is,' Josephine said. ‘Thank you – I love it. Shall we have a look round the garden? It's beautiful at this time of the evening. We can have a drink outside.'

They sat on the bench and talked while the sun set. The music drifted out from the house, seemingly written for an evening such as this, and Josephine was pleased to see that the Suffolk light was playing its customary trick on the landscape, weaving a cloth of rich red and gold across the fields. ‘You'll be building a bathroom on, obviously,' Marta said, looking doubtfully at the outhouse. ‘I can't see that being much fun in the winter.'

Josephine laughed. ‘Where's your sense of adventure? Anyway, I've got to decide if I'm keeping it before I get the builder in.'

‘You're not in a hurry to give this up, surely? I can't imagine anything more peaceful. I'll move in if you don't want it.'

‘Be my guest.'

‘Careful. I might take that as an invitation.' Gently, Marta touched Josephine's cheek, just below her eyes. ‘You look tired.'

‘Do I? I was aiming at something rather more glamorous for you.'

‘The two aren't mutually exclusive. You are all right?'

‘Yes, I'm fine. I haven't been sleeping very well since I got here, that's all.'

‘Aren't Hester's mattresses up to scratch either? We obviously need to go shopping.' The response was a feeble smile and Marta looked at her, concerned. ‘What's wrong, Josephine?'

So Josephine told her, surprising herself with how much of the last few days she was willing to be open about, from the details of Hester's death to her own sadness and the other, more complex emotions about her family that it had revived. ‘I'm sorry,' she admitted. ‘I didn't mean to tell you all this the minute you got here.'

‘Of course you must talk to me. I wondered why we moved so quickly through the bedrooms, and why you've obviously been sleeping – or not sleeping – in the single bed. I thought you were trying to tell me something.'

‘Hardly. I haven't brought you all this way to sleep in separate rooms.'

‘I'm glad to hear it.'

‘It's ridiculous, though, isn't it? People die alone all the time and I didn't even know Hester, but I can't stop thinking about it.'

‘Why is that ridiculous? You've been left an old house in a place you don't know, by a woman you barely met, in a will full of odd instructions that you can't make head or tail of. That in itself would be enough to fuck with your sanity, but then you find out that she died in a boxroom, estranged from the few friends she had, after what sounds like months of sadness and suffering.'

‘I suppose when you put it like that . . .'

‘There's no other way
to
put it. And apart from all that, when was the last time you were truly alone for any length of time?'

‘I'm often alone at home.'

‘No, you're not. You're on your own in an empty house, but that's not the same thing at all. You have routines and a town life and a woman coming in to clean, and you know your father will be home in the evening. Having a few hours to yourself is nothing like this.' She waved at the open countryside to prove her point. ‘You've been brought face to face with yourself for the first time in years, and that's enough to send anyone screwy.'

‘Thank you!'

Marta laughed, and held up a cigarette as a peace offering. ‘I didn't mean that in quite the way it came out. I just meant that you only really ever learn who you are when you're alone. God knows I've found that out in the past, for better and for worse.' If Josephine had known a fraction of the grief and betrayal that Marta had experienced in her life, she doubted that she would ever have trusted herself with solitude again. They had known each other for little more than two years. Josephine had met Marta as the lover of a friend, had helped her through a terrible time in her life, and – against every impulse of loyalty, to Lydia and to a life free of commitment to anyone – had fallen in love. Marta rarely spoke of her pain, but the tragedy of that time – the death of two children, one executed for killing the other – was never far from Josephine's mind, a peculiar hybrid of barrier and bond between them. ‘Look, I'm sure Hester didn't mean to cause you all this soul-searching,' Marta said, misreading her train of thought, ‘but if she'd set out to ensure that you didn't sleep at night, she could hardly have made a better job of it.'

‘That's true. Actually, my solicitor said that she was having second thoughts about leaving me the cottage.' Josephine told Marta about the phone call that Hester had made to John MacDonald, her evident distraction and the doubts that her goddaughter would even want the gift. ‘By that stage, her sight was probably too poor to put
any
instructions in writing, so the will stayed as it was. But I can't help feeling that something might have happened here, something that tainted the cottage for Hester and made her afraid to be in her own home.' She thought for a moment. ‘Yes, I suppose that's it. The thing that cries out to me about Hester's death is fear.'

Marta looked sceptical. ‘I know it's all a bit strange and mysterious, but there
is
a simpler explanation for those last-minute doubts. Perhaps she was frightened of your knowing what she'd become. From what you've said to me, she was obviously quite something in her heyday and we all want to be remembered for our finest hour. She must have known that the state of the cottage would give her away. Perhaps all that stuff about your deciding what was important was just an elaborate way of telling you to remember how she lived and all she achieved.' She smiled provocatively at Josephine. ‘Are you sure you're working on the right biography? Couldn't the Scottish chap wait?'

‘I've accepted money for the Scottish chap, God help me.'

‘All the same, you should think about it. Hester's life interwoven with the character she played and that murder you told me about. Wouldn't that be an interesting book?'

‘Yes, it would,' Josephine admitted, warming to the idea. ‘I can only imagine how that would go down round here, though. A celebration of Maria Marten, on stage and in real life.'

‘Well, maybe that's what Hester wanted – a tribute to them both. In which case, she could hardly have left her secrets in better hands. And it would be good for you, too – a way of working through the strangeness of all this and getting Hester out of your system.' She looked curiously at Josephine. ‘Why are you smiling at me like that?'

‘Because I'm so pleased to see you.' She took the drink from Marta's hand and drew her into a long, intense kiss. ‘Thank you,' she said. ‘Now let's forget all about Hester and Maria, and go and eat.'

They took the long way round the garden to the house. ‘I'm not surprised you're having trouble,' Marta said, bending down to smell the roses. ‘She's still here.'

‘You sense that too?'