The Scold's Bridle (6 page)

"Smoking."

Sarah shrugged. "I'm not in the habit of lecturing."

Ruth stared at her with moody eyes. "Your husband said Granny called you her scold's bridle. Why would she do that if you didn't tick her off for nagging?"

Sarah looked out of the windows to where the huge cedar of Lebanon, after which the house was named, cast a long shadow on the grass. As she watched, the blustery wind drove a cloud across the sun and wiped the shadow away. "We didn't have that sort of relationship," she said, turning back to the girl. "I enjoyed your grandmother's company. I don't recall any occasion when a ticking-off would have been appropriate."

"
I
wouldn't have liked being called a scold's bridle."

Sarah smiled. "I found it rather flattering. I believe she meant it as a compliment."

"I doubt it," said the girl bluntly. "I suppose you know she used the bridle on my mother when my mother was a child?" She smoked the cigarette nervously, taking short, rapid drags and expelling the smoke through her nose. She saw Sarah's disbelief. "It's true. Granny told me about it once. She hated people crying, so whenever Mum cried she used to lock her in a cupboard with that thing strapped to her head. Granny's father did it to her. That's why she thought it was all right."

Sarah waited but she didn't go on. "That was cruel," she murmured.

"Yes. But Granny was tougher than Mum and, anyway, it didn't matter much what you did to children when Granny was young, so being punished by wearing a bridle was probably no different from being thrashed with a belt. But it was awful for my mother." She crushed the cigarette under her foot. "There was no one to stand up for her and take her side. Granny could do what she liked whenever she liked."

Sarah wondered what the girl was trying to tell her. "It's an increasingly common problem, I'm afraid. Men, under stress, take their problems out on their wives. Women, under stress, take theirs out on their children, and there's nothing more stressful for a woman than to be left holding the baby."

"Do you condone what Granny did?" There was a wary look in her eyes.

"Not at all. I suppose I'm trying to understand it. Most children in your mother's position suffer constant verbal abuse, and that is often as damaging as the physical abuse, simply because the scars don't show and nobody outside the family knows about it." She shrugged. "But the results are the same. The child is just as repressed and just as flawed. Few personalities can survive the constant battering of criticism from a person they depend on. You either crawl or fight. There's no middle way."

Ruth looked angry. "My mother had both, verbal and physical. You've no idea how vicious my grandmother was to her."

"I'm sorry," said Sarah helplessly. "But if it's true that Mathilda was also punished brutally as a child, then she was as much a victim as your mother. But I don't suppose that's any consolation to you."

Ruth lit another cigarette. "Oh, don't get me wrong," she said with an ironic twist to her mouth, "I loved my grandmother. At least she had some character. My mother has none. Sometimes I hate her. Most of the time I just despise her." She frowned at the floor, stirring the dust with the toe of one shoe. "I think she killed Granny and I don't know what to do about it. Half of me blames her and the other half doesn't."

Sarah let the remark hang in the air for a moment while she cast around for something to say. What sort of accusation was this? A genuine accusation of murder? Or a spiteful sideswipe by a spoilt child against a parent she disliked? "The police are convinced it was suicide, Ruth. They've closed the case. As I understand it, there's no question of anyone else being involved in your grandmother's death."

"I don't mean Mum actually did it," she said, "you know, took the knife and did it. I mean that she drove Granny to killing herself. That's just as bad." She raised suspiciously bright eyes. "Don't you think so, Doctor?"

"Perhaps. If such a thing is possible. But from what you've told me of your mother's relationship with Mathilda, it sounds unlikely. It would be more plausible if it had happened the other way round and Mathilda had driven your mother to suicide." She smiled apologetically. "Even then, that sort of thing doesn't happen very often, and there would be a history of mental instability behind the person who saw suicide as their only escape from a difficult relationship."

But Ruth wasn't to be persuaded so easily. "You don't understand," she said. "They could be as unpleasant as they liked to each other and it didn't matter a damn. Mum was just as bad as Granny, but in a different way. Granny said what she thought while Mum just went on chipping away with snide little remarks. I hated being with them when they were together." Her lips thinned unattractively. "That was the only good thing about being sent to boarding school. Mum moved out then and went to London, and I could choose whether to come here for my holidays or go to Mum's. I didn't have to be a football any more."

How little Sarah knew about these three women. Where was Mr. Lascelles, for example? Had he, like James Gillespie, run away? Or was Lascelles some kind of courtesy title that Joanna had adopted to give her daughter legitimacy? "How long did you and your mother live here, then, before you went away to school?"

"From when I was a baby to when I was eleven. My father died and left us without a bean. Mum had to come crawling home or we'd have starved. That's her story at least. But personally I think she was just too snobbish and too lazy to take a menial job. She preferred Granny's insults to getting her hands dirty." She wrapped her arms about her waist and leaned forward, rocking herself. "My father was a Jew." She spoke the word with contempt.

Sarah was taken aback. "Why do you say it like that?"

"It's how my grandmother always referred to him.
That Jew.
She was an anti-Semite. Didn't you know?"

Sarah shook her head.

"Then you didn't know her very well." Ruth sighed. "He was a professional musician, a bass guitarist, attached to one of the studios. He did the backing tracks when the groups weren't good enough to do them themselves, and he had a band of his own which did gigs occasionally. He died of a heroin overdose in 1978. I don't remember him at all, but Granny took great delight in telling me what a worthless person he was. His name was Steven, Steven Lascelles." She lapsed into silence.

"How did your mother meet him?"

"At a party in London. She was supposed to get off with a deb's delight but got off with the guitarist instead. Granny didn't know anything about it until Mum told her she was pregnant, and then the shit hit the fan. I mean, can you imagine it? Mum up the spout by a Jewish rock guitarist with a heroin habit." She gave a hollow laugh. "It was a hell of a revenge." Her arms were turning blue with cold but she didn't seem to notice it. "So, anyway, they got married and she moved in with him. They had me and then six months later he was dead after spending all their money on heroin. He hadn't paid the rent for months. Mum was a widow-before she was twenty-three-on the dole with a baby and no roof over her head."

"Then coming back here was probably her only option."

Ruth pulled a sour face. "You wouldn't have done it though, not if you knew you'd never be allowed to forget your mistake."

Probably not, thought Sarah. She wondered if Joanna had loved Steven Lascelles or if, as Ruth had implied, she had taken up with him simply to spite Mathilda. "It's easy to be wise after the event," was all she said.

The girl went on as if she hadn't heard. "Granny tried to change my name to something more WASP-you know, White Anglo-Saxon Protestant-to erase the Hebrew in me. She called me Elizabeth for a while but Mum threatened to take me away, so Granny gave in. Other than that and her refusal to let Granny put the bridle on me when I cried, Mum let Granny dictate terms on everything." Her eyes flashed scornfully. "She was so wet. But it was easy to stand up to my grandmother. I did it all the time and we got on like a house on fire."

Sarah had no desire to be drawn into a domestic squabble between a mother and daughter she barely knew. She watched the long shadow creep across the lawn again as the sun emerged from behind a cloud. "Why did you ask me to come here, Ruth?"

"I don't know what to do. I thought you'd tell me."

Sarah studied the thin, rather malicious face and wondered if Joanna had any idea how much her daughter disliked her. "Don't do anything. Frankly, I can't imagine what your mother could have said or done that would have driven Mathilda to kill herself and, even if there were something, it would hardly be a chargeable offence."

"Then it should be," said Ruth harshly. "She found a letter in the house last time she was down here. She told Granny she'd publish it if Granny didn't change her will immediately and move out of the house. So Granny killed herself. She's left everything to me, you see. She
wanted
to leave everything to me." Now there was definite malice in the immature features.

Oh God, thought Sarah.
What were you trying to tell me, Mathilda?
"Have you seen this letter?"

"No, but Granny wrote and told me what was in it. She said she didn't want me to find out from my mother. So, you see, Mum did drive her to it. Granny would have done anything to avoid having her dirty linen washed in public." Her voice grated.

"Do you still have the letter she wrote to you?"

Ruth scowled. "I tore it up. But that one wasn't important, it's the one Mum found that's important. She'll use it to try and overturn Granny's will."

"Then I think you should find yourself a solicitor," said Sarah firmly, drawing her legs together under her chair preparatory to getting up. "I was your grandmother's doctor, that's all. I can't get involved between you and your mother, Ruth, and I'm quite sure Mathilda wouldn't have wanted me to."

"But she would," the girl cried. "She said in her letter that if anything happened to her I was to talk to you. She said you would know what to do for the best."

"Surely not? Your grandmother didn't confide in me. All I know about your family is what you've told me today."

A thin hand reached out and gripped hers. It was icy cold. "The letter was from Granny's uncle, Gerald Cavendish, to his solicitor. It was a will, saying he wanted everything he had to go to his daughter."

Sarah could feel the hand on hers trembling, but whether from cold or nerves she didn't know. "Go on," she prompted.

"This house and all the money was his. He was the elder brother."

Sarah frowned again. "So what are you saying? That Mathilda never had any rights to it? Well, I'm sorry, Ruth, but this is way beyond me. You really must find a solicitor and talk it through with him. I haven't a clue what your legal position is, truly I haven't." Her subconscious caught up with her. "Still, it's very odd, isn't it? If his daughter was his heir, shouldn't she have inherited automatically?"

"No one knew she was his daughter," said Ruth bleakly, "except Granny, and she told everyone James Gillespie was the father. It's my mother, Dr. Blakeney. Granny was being fucked by her uncle. It's really sick, isn't it?"

When Sarah arrived home that evening, she made a bee-line for Jack's studio. To her relief, nothing had been moved. She passed the canvas on the easel without so much as a glance, and started rummaging feverishly through the portraits stacked against the far wall. Those she recognized, she left; those she didn't, she lined up side by side, facing into the room. In all, there were three paintings she had no recollection of ever having seen before. She stood back and gazed at them, trying to decipher who they were. More accurately, she was trying to isolate one that might strike a chord.

She hoped quite earnestly that she wouldn't find it. But she did, of course. It screamed at her, a violent and vivid portrayal of bitterness, savage wit and repression, and the whole personality was encaged in a rusted iron framework that was all too clearly the scold's bridle. Sarah's shock was enormous, driving the breath from her body in a surge of panic. She collapsed on to Jack's painting stool and closed her eyes against the jeering anger of Mathilda's image.
What had he done?

The doorbell rang, jerking her to her feet like a marionette. She stood for a moment, wide-eyed with shock, then, without consciously rationalizing why she was doing it, she seized the picture, turned it round and thrust it amongst the others against the wall.