The Widow's Confession (32 page)

The only difference in Sarah from when her mother had seen her that morning was that her face was now freckled, for she had declared that she wished to be as brown as a hoveller and had long
cast her hat aside. It was Solomon who had found her, curled up in the shade of an unused bathing machine. He had woken her, then carried her, sleepy and rubbing her eyes, out to Mr Gorsey, at
which point her mother had been sent for. When Anna ran to her, sobbing, her breath catching in her throat, the little girl said petulantly, still rubbing sleep from her eyes, ‘You are crying
again, Mama. I wish you had let me sleep longer. You are always watching me. I wished to be on my own.’

Anna could say nothing; she only wept. It was Sarah’s aunt, Martha, who crouched down beside her, touched her face with her large, workworn hand and said, with all the tenderness of those
who would die for the ones they love, ‘Oh, my dearest, we were so worried about you. Please don’t do that again.’

‘Very well, Auntie,’ said Sarah.

When Theo appeared, bringing news of Alba and her innocence, Mr Benedict insisted that questions be asked about the earlier deaths.

‘We have had enough trouble for today,’ Theo said firmly. ‘You have been reading too many novels, Mr Benedict. I abhor you for even mentioning Miss Peters’s background. I
do not intend to question her any further. You are lucky that I did not explain the accusations you had made against her. At the sight of her, I knew how unfounded they were. I can hardly fathom,
Mrs Beck, how you could have encouraged him in this malicious suggestion.’

‘Theo.’ Edmund’s voice warned him. The clergyman whipped his boot.

‘I thank you for defending me, Mr Steele,’ said Delphine, ‘but I lost Mr Hallam’s good opinion long ago.’

‘Let us thank our God that we can put these ridiculous thoughts behind us,’ said Theo.

Delphine looked at Mr Benedict, and he at her. ‘I was trying to make amends,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I went too far – I have been accused of it before. Do not blame Mrs
Beck.’ He raised his hat. Across the expanse of wet sand he went.

The group took tea in the Albion, speaking little, drained of their energy and conversation, which was kept buoyed up by Mrs Quillian. She looked noticeably relieved at the sight of Miss Waring
and Alba crossing the floor to join them.

‘Good afternoon,’ said Miss Waring. ‘Heroes, I understand – Mr Steele, Mr Hallam.’ Alba followed shyly behind. Delphine, sipping her cold tea, noticed that marked
shyness, as though Alba had regressed to her earlier role, and wondered whether the girl had really grasped the implications of what had happened that day. She guessed not, for she looked happy,
and was blushing. She was dressed in a gown Delphine had never seen before, pale pink, edged with lace; her face framed by a dark blue bonnet. For the first time, she was groomed in a particular,
layered way, as though her youth had been tied up and bound. Still, she looked happy, and her eyes darted skittishly over the group.

‘Miss Alba,’ said Delphine, as the gentlemen rose and Edmund moved to bring extra chairs. ‘Why do you not come and sit with me?’

Alba looked over them all, glanced at her aunt, at Theo, then laughed. Still, when Mr Steele put the chair down she did draw it near to Delphine.

Miss Waring took a seat too, giving the company a tender smile. Edmund signalled for more tea.

‘I am glad this day has ended well,’ Miss Waring said, ‘indeed I am. I would not wish such a beautiful day to be overshadowed by terrible tragedy, but as all is well, so I said
to Alba, let us come and see our friends, and be glad.’

‘I am thankful that the little one is home,’ said Mrs Quillian. ‘I cannot help but think that those other deaths were accidental – but you can hardly wonder that the town
is on edge.’

Delphine turned to look out of the window. Her spirits were too dull to disagree and remind Mrs Quillian that she had not been on the beach the day that Bessie Dalton had nearly died, and seen
the terror in the faces of the Dalton children.

‘As I say, we are grateful for the happy conclusion of events,’ said Miss Waring, and there was a slight sense of reproof in her voice, for she had been interrupted. ‘And Alba
is grateful that Mr Hallam came to bring her from Northdown.’

Delphine’s gaze darted to Miss Waring’s face. Her little eyes were shining, and her lips were curved upwards in a bright smile, so that Delphine for the first time could almost see
the young woman Miss Waring had once been. Then she followed the woman’s gaze. She was looking at Theo’s face.

He was, she thought, the same Theo, the clergyman, though his eyes were not alight. Then he licked his lips, and she noted that his hand had frozen, in the handle of his teacup, but he was not
raising it. She sensed his nerves, saw the slight crease in the centre of his brow and looked closely at him, as closely as he would study one of his grass samples under magnification, her mind
suddenly trying to describe him, as he was, in this one moment.

As she looked at him Delphine felt Alba’s cold hand enclose her own, and she was reminded of that morning in the inn at Reculver, that cloying, cold, babyish hand which refused to let go
of hers. She looked at Alba, at the beautiful face, the unalloyed cheer of her expression, and wondered why she had ever thought they were alike. But she fought this feeling, recognizing even in
that moment that it was only jealousy; an emotion she had thought dead in her.

‘He was so gentlemanly,’ Alba whispered to her as the others conversed, ‘when he came to Northdown, when he found me. He waited with me, and rode alongside the cart all the way
back, and saw me into the hotel with many gentle words. I see now, all along, how he has wished to protect me, to shield me from difficulties. He has not yet declared himself, but – I
believe, all will be well, Mrs Beck, as you told me it would be. His words were almost a declaration.’

Delphine did not blush or faint, or do anything other than sit where she was, straight-backed, her black dress spread out around her. Julia joined in the conversation in an animated fashion and,
as she spoke, briefly touched her cousin’s hand. Delphine was grateful. She knew that Julia had heard, and was shielding her, but in a moment she too found her voice and was able to say, with
perfect feeling and correctness, what was right, what was expected of her.

How the English amuse me, with their great gift of politeness. Their smoothing over, with silence. I had thought politeness a tyranny, another bar in the cage that kept us
confined, but in fact it served to heal. Mr Steele begged that we might stay a few weeks, saying that things would calm down if I would only stay off the beach in the mornings. He did not wish to
be parted from Julia, and he felt an obligation to stay at the parsonage a while longer. What the content of that obligation was, I did not know. Word came that Mr Benedict had settled a cottage
and a pension on Polly Gorsey; no one mentioned the matter again, and though Miss Waring expressed, with great conviction, her low opinion of him, Mrs Quillian received him one day for tea –
though not at the Albion – so it appeared he was forgiven.

Like the sand-sifters in the evening, searching for valuables left on the beach, so we scoured the landscape for some pleasure in our last days there.

‘I haven’t seen you for a good long time,’ Solomon said.

Delphine smiled, and drew on her cigarette. It was early morning, and the bay lay, peaceful and calm, beneath the cool white of an autumn sky.

‘I have come to say farewell,’ she said. ‘We are engaged to watch you all sail, at the Ramsgate Regatta, and then we will be leaving immediately afterwards.’

‘It’s best for you,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry you’ve had trouble. You only need to be a little different here, madam, and for one voice to pick you out, and then .
. .’ He gave an expansive gesture.

‘There is no need to worry for me, Solomon. I wanted to bid you farewell, and see the bay one more time.’

‘But not to paint it?’ he said, kicking at a piece of seaweed with his booted foot.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Not to paint it.’

The trunks were packed, the house in London empty and waiting for them. Mrs Quillian had arranged the trip to the Regatta, mentioning cheerfully that they would meet Mr
Benedict and his wife there, as though the Gorsey incident had never happened. Delphine wished to leave, but she could not deny Julia one last day with Edmund, for he had promised to stay with Theo
until the end of October, when he would return to London for the wedding.

It was like old times. Mr Hallam and Mr Steele rode alongside the carriage which carried the ladies. Delphine could not help but notice that Alba did not look at Mr Hallam as he rode; her eyes
were not drawn to him at all. She was the same old Alba, her face against the window, staring out at everything and nothing, occasionally responding to her aunt. But there was no more reading from
guidebooks. It seemed certain that the clergyman would ask for her hand before the end of the season, so her great effort was over.

It was with some misgiving that Delphine looked from the window down the long sweep of the road to the harbour, at the grand marina of Ramsgate below, crowded with ships, their coloured flags
flying in celebration, and the light sparkling on the water.

‘It is very different from Broadstairs,’ said Julia. ‘How fine it looks, how crowded and busy, almost as though it is ready for a carnival.’

‘Perhaps we should have come here for the season,’ said Delphine, earning hurt looks from Mrs Quillian and, briefly, Alba.

Perhaps, she thought, I would have been friends with poor Mrs Benedict, herding her children along the beach. Perhaps I would have painted different scenes. Those girls’ deaths would have
been distant things; I would not have even heard of them.

Mr Benedict greeted them at the Custom House, and Delphine wondered how long he had been waiting for them. Mrs Quillian went to him first, and shook his hand. He looked dapper
and neat, clerkish in the way he had that last time she had seen him, and he was not wearing any of the jewels or flamboyant scarves he had favoured at Broadstairs. His hair was still long, of
course, but other than that he was simply a respectable wealthy gentleman. His wife, her hand resting lightly on his arm, received each person graciously. She was, Delphine thought, painfully
beautiful, with blonde hair, pale blue eyes and a delicate, aquiline nose – but her features held their beauty because they had a certain sweetness and other-worldliness.

She longed all at once to pay obeisance to Mrs Benedict, and to punish Mr Benedict, who had always cast his family to be such a burden – if not directly, then with many implied words and
looks. But despite the children that crowded around her, Mrs Benedict was slim, graceful, and had nothing but kind words for the people to whom she was introduced. Five years before, Delphine
thought, she would have put Alba into the shade, and indeed the girl seemed suddenly shy in the presence of this elegant woman, who let no shadow of suspicion fall across her beautiful features
when Mr Benedict greeted Alba with wariness.

They walked along the harbour arm, remarking on the beauty of the boats and the stillness of the water, and Delphine found herself suddenly alongside Mr Benedict, who offered her his arm. She
took it, because in that moment she could think of no way to refuse it. As they walked she saw him tip his chin up to the sun, luxuriating in it like a sunflower, this sensual man, and she felt the
sadness of envy curl in her stomach. The ribbons on her bonnet caught in the breeze and rippled and danced like the sails of the boats in the harbour.

‘I am not forgiven, even now?’ he said softly.

She said nothing.

‘I am sorry for speaking to Polly about your past,’ he said. ‘It was an error in judgement, but you have misunderstood me if you ever think I meant to cause you harm. I am a
little over-dramatic, when I am spurned. You and I are alike – no, I do not jest with you. There is something of the same spirit about us, I think, and we both express it through painting. I
said as much to Emma last night.’ He glanced over his shoulder at his wife, caught her eye and smiled. Delphine turned and saw his wife smiling back at him – not innocently, but with a
kind of knowing that spoke of the intimacy of marriage. Benedict continued.

‘I thought, from that first moment, that you and I are both looking for purity in a world which is not pure. When I discovered, as a very young child, that I had a rare facility with the
pencil and the brush, do you think in that same moment of joy, I learned how to flatter and charm? I did not. I pursued only my gift at drawing and painting, and with a wolf-like energy which, even
now, I still wonder at. Like you, I did it for the joy of it. The moments when I saw something – a turn in the light, an expression on someone’s face – I became enfolded in the
curiosity of that moment, and sought to capture it.

‘I have made compromises to become what I am now. I paint what the public wishes to see, and I am mocked for it – but one must live, mustn’t one? And one must have money to
live. I have taken this route, and there is nothing I can do now. “Conventional” – how you wounded me when you said that, perhaps all the more so because it is true, and refers to
my painting as well as my life. I have tamed my art, to make it palatable. Despite my mocking of Mr Hallam, I am no more a true follower of Turner than he is. Yet when I remember leaning over my
sketchbook as a child, a piece of chalk clutched in my chubby fingers, it turns something like a key in my breast. Nothing in my life has ever come close to those moments. I still seek it, though,
and sometimes in the worst places – seeking sensation after sensation, as though that might surprise me again.’

They drew up. Ahead, Alba was remarking on a colourful craft, pointing the details out to Mr Hallam and her aunt.

‘I do not want to listen to your excuses for ruining people,’ Delphine said. ‘You repeated rumours about me, when you did not know the truth.’

‘Oh, I am past excuses, Miss Sears,’ he said, and the use of her real name made Delphine’s heart jump in her chest. ‘I think Amy is a pretty name,’ he went on.
‘I remember that day, long ago, when Miss De Witt fainted at the sound of it – the name of the dead girl, Amy Phelps. Did she think you had been found out?’