The Widow's Confession (9 page)

‘Are you lodging nearby?’ she asked.

‘No,’ said the woman. ‘We are at the Albion Hotel, near Main Bay. We came too far – Alba wished so much to see the Foreland.’

‘It is all my fault,’ said Alba, turning back to them abruptly, obviously having been listening. ‘I am so sorry, Aunt. And to think I could have placed you in
danger.’

‘I have forgotten my manners,’ said the woman. ‘My name is Miss Waring, and this is Miss Albertine Peters, my niece.’

‘I am pleased to make your acquaintance,’ said Delphine.

‘Are you . . . Americans?’ Miss Waring said, having taken a mouthful of cheese.

‘We are,’ Delphine said, feeling her expression harden. ‘How clever of you to know the accent.’

‘I think it delightful,’ Miss Waring said, and real pleasure seemed to light up her little hazel eyes. ‘I knew an American man once, in London. He was a very jolly fellow.
Entertaining. He went back there. It was a shame for all of us.’

‘Oh, Aunt,’ said Alba. Delphine could not work out if she was speaking in exasperation or affection. Having recovered from the shock of her aunt being ill, her face had returned to
that neutral, expressionless beauty which had so struck Delphine. The perfect artist’s model, she thought, an empty canvas, waiting for a story to be painted upon it.

Suddenly, the aunt’s pleasure faded to fear. ‘Alba, my dear,’ she said. ‘What if Mr Brown comes? He will expect to see us up on the cliffs.’

‘He did not come when he was supposed to,’ said Alba. ‘Traitorous man. We sat there for a long time. He said he would be but half an hour.’ Delphine had to suppress a
smile at her dramatic tone.

‘I am here to convalesce,’ explained Miss Waring, addressing Delphine. ‘I have a nervous complaint. The air has been doing me good, until the unfortunate events of the last few
days, which have unsettled me. Well, we need not speak of it. Alba has come to join me and be my companion for the summer. She knows the place a little, and we have visited with our friends at
Northdown House. You love that place, don’t you, my dear? But I am afraid I am a wearisome companion, and being in the hotel suits me a little better. The young have such energy. My poor
girl.’

‘I am grateful to be here,’ said Alba stiffly, and she kicked hard into the sand, like a recalcitrant child. Miss Waring tutted under her breath. Delphine noticed that Alba was
wearing thin shoes, not the heavy strong boots needed for such walking.

‘The tide is coming in,’ said Julia, as Miss Waring finished the sandwiches. ‘We should think of making our way up to the cliffs. Someone should go and wait for this Mr Brown,
just in case he comes.’

‘Alba – that is, Miss Albertine – must stay with me,’ said Miss Waring. There was something definite about the turn of her mouth when she said the words.

‘I will go up,’ said Delphine, rising and brushing off her skirts. ‘What does this Mr Brown look like? I do not wish to stare and wave at every man I see.’

‘Of course not,’ said Miss Waring with a hint of severity. ‘He is a rough-looking man, and wears a very old straw hat. He has thick black whiskers; is short, but stout and
strong. His pony is a dappled grey.’

‘That is quite enough to be going on with,’ said Delphine, impressed by her powers of observation. And with a nod at Julia, she turned and made her way up the steep slope with its
uneven footholds cut from the chalk, wondering how on earth they would get the woman up there.

Delphine stood waiting for some time.

Finally, coming from the opposite direction of town, she saw a black dot moving along the road, the shape of a horse and cart. It was approaching in a slow, almost leisurely fashion, and she had
to fight the impulse to shout and wave. Impatience was always a sin of mine, she thought. It is what damned me, really. So by strength of will alone she stayed rooted to the spot, frowning, until
she saw with grim satisfaction a stout man wearing a straw hat, driving a dappled grey pony.

‘Mr Brown!’ she said, as he pulled up.

‘Yeah?’ he grunted. ‘Who’s asking?’

‘Your patroness, Miss Waring,’ she said tartly. ‘She has been waiting for you for several hours.’

He got down from his post, held his pony’s head protectively. The pony laid her ears back. Delphine longed for the animal to butt at him, perhaps even give him a bite, for he fixed her
with an insolent glare.

‘I never promised anythin’,’ he said. ‘I said I had business to do at Northdown, and then I’d be back.’

She hardly knew why, but Delphine hated him in that moment; and the feeling came upon her so suddenly and completely that it left her silent. Was it the confident sensuality in his gaze, she
wondered later, that reminded her of the past, and sparked her hostility?

‘Here they are,’ he said. ‘Just in time.’

They had made it up the cliff: Julia, Miss Waring and Alba, the two women supporting the matron. At the sight of the man, Alba’s face transformed with dislike, and Delphine felt a bond
with her.

‘You naughty man!’ Alba said. ‘You did not come to collect us, so I took my aunt down to see if the coastal walk would be easier on the sand, and we could well have been
stranded if these ladies had not come to help us.’

‘Coastal walk easier on the sand?’ said the man, with a snort of contempt. ‘What a notion. Wherever did you get that from, miss? If you’d just stayed up here there would
have been no problem at all. You’re lucky you didn’t get in trouble down there. That’s the smugglers’ bay, that is, and I wonder you weren’t chased by their ghosts.
And now the bay has more ghosts . . .’

‘Do not frighten her,’ said Miss Waring rather stiffly, but with none of the displeasure Delphine had imagined she would unleash. ‘You are here now, so help me up, if you
please. We wish to go home and have a cup of tea.’

The man rolled his eyes but heaved the lady up, Julia supporting her elbow. Alba stayed below, watching anxiously, her arms wrapped around herself. When the man went to hand her up – with
a lascivious glint in his eye – she turned her back on him and curtseyed to Delphine and Julia. ‘Thank you for your assistance, Mrs Beck, Miss Mardell,’ she said. ‘We are
staying at the Albion Hotel, and usually take tea there every morning and afternoon. I hope we meet in happier circumstances during your stay in Broadstairs.’

‘As do we,’ Delphine said. ‘We are at Victory Cottage.’

But Alba was already leaping up into the cart, snatching her hand away from Mr Brown as she settled next to her aunt. ‘Adieu,’ she said. Mr Brown snapped his whip with a nasty smile
and they set off.

Julia and Delphine stood on the clifftop and waited until the cart had rattled out of sight. Julia looked at Delphine.
‘Adieu
indeed,’ she said. ‘And why on earth did
you tell her our address?’

‘Did you not think her extraordinary?’ asked Delphine. ‘I saw her at church. She will be fending off proposals as soon as the summer season begins.’

‘I am no judge of what men think of as beautiful,’ said Julia. ‘Everyone agreed that my life had been ruined by being born with such a face as this. But as a child, when I
looked in the glass, I could never bring myself to be ashamed of it. Now, shall we go to Kingsgate – at last?’

After our meeting with Alba, the old fear and bitterness came upon me again, as though the past was on my heels. I kept myself from the fresh cool air of morning and stayed
inside my parlour, trapped inside my tightly-laced corset and the layers of my dress, waiting for the heat of the day to reveal itself. As the days passed, the heat deepened into that kind of
warmth which is held in rock and sand as afternoon passes into evening. It was so hot that Martha had to grate horseradish into the milk to keep it fresh, and leave saucers of beer on the floor at
night to trap the cockroaches. And as the sun rose in the sky, I lay on the faded embroidery of the sofa in our parlour and thought of the past, in the hope that thinking of it might inure me to
it, but it had never lost its grip on me, and the memory of it still made my heart beat hard in my chest.

Then came the first summons from Mrs Quillian.

Mrs Quillian showed her character the next week, in a flurry of notes delivered to the people she had met, with promises of an excursion and a picnic: ‘cold hock, salty ham, and fresh
bread warm from the bakehouse’, were the words she used. Delphine smiled at that, liking the fact that she – unlike so many women – did not keep her bread until it was starting to
stale. She supposed the old lady was from that generation where pleasure was not so frowned upon.
Dear ladies, bring shade from the sun,
she had written, as if there was any doubt in the
matter. The group’s rallying place was the Albion Hotel. Delphine wrote and said they would go, surprising herself as well as Julia with the wish to, but on the morning of the picnic her
enthusiasm faded. She dressed in her most stifling dress of black stuff, and twined her hair choker around her white neck.

They waited in the saloon of the Albion. Delphine saw Mr Benedict across the room, and knew from his movements that he was trying to catch her eye, so she gazed around her, as though absorbed in
the décor. A large clock, with crystal pillars either side of its ornate face, ticked on a high shelf, and she pointed it out to Julia.

‘A fine piece, don’t you think?’ Delphine said, nodding towards it. Their grandfather had been a connoisseur of such things; the family’s Fifth Avenue house stuffed with
every kind of objet d’art. ‘I wonder how much it cost.’

Julia glanced over her shoulder then turned back to Delphine. ‘You have a better eye than me,’ she said. ‘And I wish you would not mention the price of everything, as though we
are in trade. You know how the English dislike it.’

‘You must forgive me if money concerns me,’ said Delphine tightly.

‘We are in a fix, aren’t we?’ said Julia. ‘I knew you were keeping something from me.’

‘Hush,’ said Delphine. Mr Benedict was striding towards them.

He bowed low. ‘Mrs Beck. Will you permit me to join your carriage? I very much wish to discuss painting with you; our first stop will be a viewpoint I think you will like.’

‘I would not wish to disrupt Mrs Quillian’s plans,’ said Delphine.

‘Nor I, of course. Ah, see how poor Gorsey produces this fêted picnic.’ Mr Gorsey and his daughter Polly were labouring with a heavy hamper. Benedict came closer to her, and
Delphine was aware that Julia had stepped away to speak to Mrs Quillian, their words blending into the mêlée of the other voices in the room. ‘Are you well?’ he said, in a
low voice, so close that she felt the warmth of his slightly sour breath. ‘We have not had a moment to speak of what we both saw on the beach. I was unprepared for the shock of it. Strange,
when death is all around us, to be so shocked by something.’

‘Not strange,’ said Delphine. ‘Natural. But I do not see any reason to speak of what we saw. As Mr Hallam says, she is with God now. We should do our best to forget what we
have seen.’

In truth, she did wish to speak, but not to Benedict. She could not bring herself to trust him, not even when his face, in the light, looked to be all goodness and openness. She felt no hint of
the confidence she had felt even on her first meeting with Mr Steele. And yet – she knew that all confidence in a person was dangerous; trust was not a word she favoured. Mr Benedict, Mr
Hallam, even Mr Steele – they were all enemies waiting to hatch. The dead girl’s vulnerable body, lying on the sand, had woken some deep pain in her. Her normal calmness had not
reasserted itself; instead she found, reawakened, her bitter distrust of the world which had sprung into life one distant week in New York. And, not for the first time, she wondered if Julia
carried that in her too – a distrust so deep it felt like a wound.

‘Forget it?’ Mr Benedict was echoing her words, and even her tone, and in his sudden, quiet-voiced anger she knew that she was right not to trust him – for so quickly, wildness
was returning to his eyes. ‘How we can forget what we have seen? What we have experienced, together? Do you not feel fellowship between us, having been through that?’

‘I do not know what game you are trying to play, sir,’ she said, matching his low tone with her own. ‘But if you attempt to use a dead child to establish some connection with
me, then I will think it very poor of you. We are at Mrs Quillian’s excursion; let us travel lightly, and leave off our thoughts of sorrow. But I beg of you, do not think me any more
connected to you than,’ she glanced at the grumpy landlord, ‘Mr Gorsey, or Dr Crisp – or Mr Steele.’

She then stepped away, keeping her face averted so he would know not to speak to her again, and so she would not be forced to look at him. She began to speak to Julia and saw that Alba, standing
next to her aunt, who appeared to be chattering to the air, was gazing at her: the same gaze she had seen at the church, but this time infused with a piercing curiosity.

‘Mrs Beck?’ It was Mr Steele, his smile one of unaffected pleasure. ‘I am glad to see you have been able to join the excursion – and you, Miss Mardell, may I say what a
pleasure it is to see you?’ He sought a smile from Julia, and gained one, and Delphine saw that her cousin was both flattered and puzzled by his attention, a blush rising in her face.

There were two carriages and Delphine was relieved when she found that Mr Benedict had been placed in the second carriage, and she in the first. They travelled slowly, the clopping of the
horses’ hooves languorous, as though they were sleepy, and Delphine noted as they went that the small town was fuller than she had seen it. Many of those who walked were grandly dressed; now
and then an invalid passed, pushed in a chair, or a little crowd of children with straw hats and raised voices, freed by the seaside. Marchesi’s, the confectioners, was already busy. They
passed a line of donkeys being led down towards the beach, a swinging little line with doleful eyes and twitching ears.

The carriages stopped first at the southern tip of Main Bay. The ladies got down, opening their parasols, and took a turn in the field at the edge of the cliff. Mrs Quillian told them that Mr
Benedict had asked for the stop, for he often painted here, and considered it the perfect viewpoint of the town.