The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton (25 page)

Before Laurence could retort, Patrick stood up. ‘She is all the things I know you admire. She’s strong and clever and she cuts through cant and she’s the equal of any man. But she’s also beautiful, passionate...’

‘I don’t want to know all this.’

‘I’m not about to tell you
all this’.
Now Patrick had lost his own composure. ‘I’m asking you to consider whether she might have liked a day, a day or two, of fun, of normal life. To have someone look after her for a change. And I’m telling you, just in case you think I’m a total cad, that I love her. I love her more than I would ever have thought possible. If she would come away with me, with Nicholas, if she chose, I would be the happiest man on earth.’

Laurence looked at him, astonished. He had assumed Patrick was a serial seducer and that Eleanor, despite her apparent worldliness, had been one of his victims.

‘But she and I both know it can’t be,’ Patrick said, feeling in his pockets.

‘I’m glad,’ Laurence said, drily.

‘I expect, having lost your wife, you’re the last person I should expect any sympathy from,’ Patrick said, jiggling a cigarette out of its case.

So even in Patrick’s arms, Laurence thought, Eleanor hadn’t told him everything. Laurence remembered, as he rarely did these days, the sense of claustrophobia that had overwhelmed him in the early days of his marriage. How suffocated he felt by Louise’s determined creation of domestic bliss and what opportunities for escape the war seemed to offer. He shook his head wearily.

‘I’m afraid all marriages are more complicated than they seem.’

He remembered wondering back then whether all married people got more lonely as their marriage progressed, as their spouses became more familiar but less known.

Patrick had lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. ‘Nicholas loves William. Eleanor loves Nicholas. All very simple. Except that Patrick loves Eleanor and Eleanor also loves Patrick.’

‘Does she?’ Laurence realised his tone had sounded mocking.

Patrick paced to the window.

‘Yes, she does, actually. I may not seem much of a man to you, but she sees more in me and yes, she loves me.’

‘And you were proposing to take her where? To Crete to live on a backward island with a child?’

Patrick wheeled round, now obviously furious.

‘My God, I was a fool to think you’d have the sensitivity to understand, even if you didn’t approve. No, to Oxford. I would have taken her to Oxford, where she could have shone, been among her intellectual peers.’

Laurence felt a brief and astonishing ache in his chest. The life Patrick could offer Eleanor was so much more than she could ever have while married to William. He could imagine her arguing over dinner tables, attending talks, listening to the Fabians: all the things that fired her. Having more children. Of course, Patrick could give her children.

But instead of conceding all this, he fired back, ‘Garden parties in the quad, drinks with the master? Watching all the clever young men have a life she can never have? Knowing the women gossip about her abandoned husband? That’s if anybody would receive her at all.’

‘You’re quite the knight in shining armour,’ Patrick said. ‘I’m sure Eleanor would be touched to hear of your concerns.’

‘The thing is,’ Laurence said, quietly, ‘Eleanor is passionate, about injustice, about people she loves, but she is also ... dutiful. She was a nurse in appalling conditions in France. She gave up her academic life, swapping quiet libraries, summer punts on the river and tea parties for blood, pus and vomit, caring for boys turned into leaking carcasses for a war she didn’t even damn well believe in. That she didn’t even have to be part of. So don’t think you could have rescued her from a life of duty, Patrick, because all you could ever have offered her in exchange would be a life of guilt. And once the grand passion wore off, what then would she have made of you and of herself?’

He could hear his own voice, loud and accusatory.

‘I know you would have taken a commission if you possibly could, I accept that,’ he went on. ‘But once you were rejected you couldn’t even come back to look after your brother’s estate. He and most of Easton’s men were being slaughtered and, for all you knew, Julian too, while poor stricken Lydia was here trying to keep the place going with old men. And all the time you were ... oh yes ... in Oxford, not so far away, with the men of ideas, with your research. You have no idea of duty. So what kept you away? Envy? Pride? Tell me. I’d like to understand.’

For a moment he thought Patrick was going to hit him. He had stepped closer, his fists balled. He was ashen faced with greyish lips. His pupils were dilated.

However, he spoke in a whisper. ‘No.
You
have no idea. You live among us, eat our food, give William a helping hand, be the thoroughly decent, if bruised, chap you are. Make judgments about us—of course you do, you watch, you catch subtleties of tone and behaviour, you make connections, you’re that sort of man. An observer. More a man living on the edge of other people’s lives than at the centre of his own.’

Patrick was watching to see whether the comment, clearly meant to wound, hit home but Laurence felt more exposed than injured.

‘Eleanor says you are perceptive,’ Patrick went on, ‘but inclined to see the best in people.’ He looked momentarily amused. ‘I think she sees that as a strength. So you probably feel desperately sorry for Lydia—who wouldn’t? You’re rather keen on Frances—perhaps have a few hopes there?’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘And at the very least you wish she could escape and build her own life. You find Julian a bit dull but, in his way, admirable. You think that I’m a bit of a waster but probably good in my own field. You share the collective hope that Easton can live again. You get frustrated, possibly even irritated, that all we ever do is look backwards to our losses while the small ghost of Kitty flits over our lives, casting her gossamer shadow.’

It was so close to the truth that Laurence couldn’t think of any reply.

‘And all the time you have no damned idea.’

Patrick moved away, turning his back to Laurence.

‘You must think I’m a monster,’ he said, ‘leaving my doubly bereaved, fragile sister-in-law to manage Easton, returning only to seduce the married wife of a mutilated officer.’

He had turned back again and was watching Laurence very carefully.

‘I’ll tell you why I shirked my duty, as you call it. You, being such a man of honour, will, I am sure, keep it to yourself.’ He paused as if reconsidering. ‘Although it’s history now and nothing good can come of returning to it.’

Laurence didn’t answer, yet one part of him wanted to stop Patrick. He had a sense that whatever Patrick was about to tell him would be something he might not want to know, yet he had made a vile accusation and the man was entitled to respond. Laurence had long realised that Patrick smiled when he was nervous. He did so now.

‘Lydia killed the child,’ he said, very quietly. ‘I didn’t want to be part of the lie.

‘I think we nearly all said to the police afterwards that it was a day like any other. Oh, it was certainly that, apart from the dance we were giving for Digby’s birthday the next day. It was a hot day. There were cracks across the lawn. It was summer: Easton Hall, idyllic in its pastoral calm. Lydia was out with Bert and Fred—he used to be head gardener—choosing flowers for the party. Kitty was with her nanny. Kitty had become quiet in recent weeks—it’s hard to remember now when that had come about. She was growing up, I suppose. A governess was coming in the autumn to replace the nanny.’ He looked up, suddenly calmer. ‘It was a long time ago, Laurence.’

‘I know,’ Laurence said. ‘Increasingly I find I can’t remember much very clearly before the war.’

Ah,
the war’,
Patrick said. ‘The war. Sometimes it’s as if I’m on a Gregorian calendar and everyone else is on a Julian one, or vice versa. Time for me is marked by incidents like the wet summer I spent in Ireland, or the August when I fell in the Thames, or my first term at school, or first was sweet on a girl, but you simply have before the war and after the war: BW and AW. Commission. Attack. Home leave. Injury. Decoration.’ He looked up with friendly ruefulness. ‘You have joined the heroes of legend. I just dig them up. But at least as a man you know what war is really like.’

‘I served for only three years,’ Laurence said. ‘And a lot of that wasn’t anywhere near the real fighting. I wasn’t a natural soldier.’

‘Back then,’ Patrick began again, ‘or should I say once upon a time? Once upon a time a handsome king married a beautiful rich queen from faraway lands and they lived in a fine palace, surrounded by wonderful gardens, with their pretty little golden-haired princess. All their courtiers and servants loved them and even those who didn’t wished they could be them. Now one day they decided to give a ball so everyone in the kingdom could see how lucky they were to have such a king ruling over them. But just then an evil witch, flying past on her broomstick, saw their happiness and cast a spell on them and their court. In the morning the witch had stolen the princess away and ordained that the flowers should rot and the servants should be cast out and the courtiers should never laugh again. The brave king died, fighting wolves in the forest, and everyone else lived unhappily ever after.

‘So,’ he continued, ‘Digby and Julian were larking around on the tennis court. They’d had another flaming row the day before so everyone was relieved to see them working it out with a ball. Walter and Joe Petch were putting up Chinese lanterns around the lake. We all met up for lemonade in the rose garden. Lydia came down with Kitty and Nanny and they had daisy-chain garlands.’

Patrick stopped and ran his fingers through his hair.

‘It was the last I saw of Kitty. She’d got a bandaged arm, but she had the flowers clutched in her funny little hand. Lydia used to tell her that six fingers made her special. So it hadn’t been a day like any other at all, it had been the last day we were happy. The day the fairy tale ended.

‘That night I stayed up with Digby and Julian who were both drinking. I was feeling very much the man. Digby was on especially good form that evening. He liked being the centre of attention, Julian less so. Lydia had gone very quiet, didn’t eat much. When she and Frances had gone up to bed, Digby was going on about the arms race and the perfidious French. Julian went to bed a bit later and I followed Digby up. He was pretty drunk, to be honest, and I walked behind him in case he fell down the stairs, but Lydia was obviously awake as I could hear him say something to her as he went into his dressing room. I went to my room and then of course I couldn’t hear much at all. I fell asleep fairly quickly, I imagine. I’d had some port and anyway I always slept well back then.

‘Sometime in the early hours, I woke up with a start. It was completely dark and I lay there listening. Nothing. But you know how it is when something’s woken you—your ears seem twice as alert? After a little time I thought I’d heard someone moving past my door. I stayed put. I guessed it was Digby, gone down for warm milk for his dyspepsia or to help him sober up. But I couldn’t settle back to sleep so I got up. That side of the house was lighter as the moon was shining in. I walked to the top of the backstairs. From there, there are four steps up to the nursery wing and you can see along the nursery corridor from the lower one. Julian had moved his bedroom down there ages ago. He used to sleep opposite me. But once we lost our indoor servants he shifted and took two rooms right at the end. He still has them—a bedroom and a study.

‘As I stood there, his door opened, or perhaps it had always been open. Lydia came out. She was a shocking sight. She was in her nightdress, with her hair loose and a blanket over her shoulders, but her arms and her nightdress were covered in blood. Then Julian came out behind her, half dressed. He took her hands, stroked her face and then helped her down the corridor. I was barefoot. I went down the backstairs until I thought she’d had time to go past. I think she went to her bathroom, I heard the pipes gurgling. I crept up, wanting to ask Julian if she was hurt, when I saw him come out of his room again, and he was carrying sheets in his arms. He laid them down carefully by the laundry chute, opened it and pulled on the cords. I remember thinking how quiet it was; the shelves usually squeak like anything when they come up, but everything seemed silent that night. Then he picked up the sheets or whatever it was—you know, I’ve been through this in my mind a thousand times since then—did he have to strain to pick the bundle up? Was it Kitty wrapped up in there? Over the years imagination imposes its own versions of memory. But the sheets were bloody, I remember that. And he was crying. In the silence, there were just his tears.’

He stopped abruptly. He didn’t seem to be waiting for any response; indeed, he seemed lost in the recollection.

‘Are you sure?’ Laurence said. ‘I’m sorry, that’s a fatuous question.’

He spoke slowly, all anger long dissipated, knowing what he was about to say could cause offence.

‘Are you certain it wasn’t a dream?’

They both heard footsteps in the hall and turned to the closed door, but the steps, whosever they were, went off in the opposite direction.

‘I don’t understand it all. But I do know that something terrible had happened and that my brother helped my sister-in-law cover it up. I like to think that Julian, ever the honourable gentleman, always with a thing about Lydia, was just trying to help her out. That he didn’t do anything himself. In the morning they both claimed to have slept peacefully the night through.’

‘But why? Why would she hurt Kitty?’

‘I don’t know.’ It was almost a cry. ‘Because she wanted to punish Digby for something? There were rumours about a village girl but they were only that. Because she’d gone mad? She was always a bit fey long before she was ill and her father hanged himself. I don’t imagine Frances has told you that. Perhaps it was an accident. Or did she plan to kill herself and take the child with her? She had seemed unhappy in recent months.’

Laurence didn’t respond. None of the scenarios made any sense.