Ursula's Secret (12 page)

Cameron and Gertie were leaning into each other, the merry widow whispering something into Cameron’s ear. A second later he threw his head back and laughed, making people at the nearby table stop talking and look up. Gertie looked around her, clearly delighted at being the centre of attention. They held their pose for a moment, then they leant their heads together again and continued their passage across the room.

Evie’s heart was racing. This was too much. The arrogance, the insensitivity of the man. She knew Ursula beside her was in agony. It was unbearable. She stood as the couple came towards the table, determined to save her friend any further humiliation. At the periphery of her vision she was aware that Gregory and Helen were looking over at them.

“Cameron, I do think—”

“Evie, darling. So sorry I won’t be joining you this evening, but Gertie absolutely insists I sit with her and you know I can’t possibly refuse a request from a beautiful woman.” Gertie’s smirk turned Evie’s stomach. “I do hope you can spare me, ladies.” He nodded in Ursula’s direction, then swept Gertie on towards her table, next to the captain’s, a burst of laughter coming from the widow’s scarlet lips as he whispered something in her ear.

Before Evie could recover herself, Gregory was beside her holding her chair. “Please, Evelyn, do sit down.”

Helen appeared at Ursula’s side. “Why don’t I sit next to you this evening, darling?”

“But that’s Cameron’s place …” Ursula’s blushes had faded and she was now as pale as the starched white of the table linen.

“Cameron will no longer be joining us,” Gregory said in a tone that suggested the subject was not open for discussion. “Just waiting for Fredi now, are we? So, ladies, what have you been doing with yourselves today?”

Evie took the cue, grateful for the opportunity to divert attention from Cameron and to give Ursula a moment or two to compose herself, although as she ran through the highlights of their unexceptional afternoon of deck quoits and tea on the sun deck, she knew no one was listening; everyone was adjusting themselves mentally to the absence of Gregory’s younger brother.

“Oh, so sorry to be so late!” Fredi arrived looking as debonair as he always did but with something a little more agitated than usual about him. “I was talking to the entertainment officer,” he gushed, “and just wait till you hear what he has planned for our final night at sea.”

Instantly the mood was lifted. Fredi had the ability to turn the most mundane situation into high drama or high excitement. Evie loved him for it, and never more so than now as he described the fancy-dress party that would mark the end of the voyage. They had three days to prepare themselves and, according to Fredi, the stewards would be only too happy to assist in costuming the guests.

“So what shall we all be? I can’t decide for myself. But Ursula, you” – Fredi turned the full force of his pale-blue eyes to her, clasping his hands together in front of his chest – “you, my dear, should be something marvellous. Marie Antoinette, perhaps – oh, and I can be your Sun King.”

“No, no, Fredi,” Helen interjected. “That’s the wrong Louis, isn’t that right, Ursula? Marie Antoinette was married to—”

“Oh details, details, my dear Helen. Who cares? Imagine, the opulence of gold, the richness of velvet, the stunning entrance we shall make, darling Ursula, you on my arm like the priceless treasure you are. Why” – he struck a pose – “we shall be divine.” Evie was relieved to see the hint of a smile on Ursula’s face as Fredi teased and tended to her, a little colour returning to her cheeks. He was no fool. Beneath that frivolous banter he was doing his utmost to protect and distract Ursula without ever alluding to the empty chair opposite them.

“And you, Helen,” he said as he summoned a waiter to fill their glasses, “you, my dear, can be Mary, Queen of Scots, visiting our court at Versailles! Yes, that would be just splendid.”

Evie was quite sure Fredi’s carelessness with history was deliberate. Helen, however, was looking serious as she tried again to correct their Danish friend. Evie took the chance to turn to Gregory.

“Well?” She raised her eyebrows.

Gregory didn’t do her the discourtesy of pretending he didn’t know what she meant. “I spoke to him. He won’t be joining us again, and I have suggested he stay in Cape Town for a while after we dock. Not travel on with us to Blantyre. Something I think he’ll be happy to do.” They both glanced over at Gertie’s table, where cocktail glasses were chinking, their contents fuelling extravagant and loud laughter.

“That must have been difficult for you.”

“Not at all. What’s difficult is seeing him behave so shoddily. I am embarrassed to call him my brother.” He looked over at Ursula, at her still-full plate, her still-considerable pallor.

“Gregory, it’s not your fault. No one holds you in the least bit responsible. You are not your brother’s keeper.”

“But I am, you see. I promised our mother I would do my best to keep him out of trouble.”

“Your best, yes, but no one can achieve the impossible and, I’m sorry to say, I think your younger brother will always find trouble. Or make it. Forgive me. I don’t mean to be rude. It’s just … puzzling. You’re so very different.”

“We have different fathers. My father died shortly after I was born, leaving my mother still young and a wealthy but, it has to be said, a rather naive widow. She didn’t stay that way long. Cameron’s father was … well, not perhaps the steady hand that my own father had been. We were bankrupt in less than a year and my stepfather long gone before Cameron was even born.”

“I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”

“My uncle took us in, brought us up. He taught me how to manage a business, how to plan and invest, balance books. All lessons my younger brother chose to absent himself from entirely.”

“You sound as if you don’t approve.”

“I don’t. Not at all.”

“No, no, no!” Helen’s laughing voice interrupted them as she turned and laid her hand on Gregory’s arm. Evie saw how quickly Gregory’s attention shifted to focus entirely on Helen’s animated face.

“Gregory, help us. Who was Mary, Queen of Scots’ husband first? Darnley or Bothwell?”

“Darnley, I believe.”

“There. Thank you, Gregory.” Helen turned back to the others. “I was right. So Fredi, as I was saying, you can’t …”

“Then why is he travelling out with you to Africa?” Evie asked, picking up the thread of their conversation.

“Hmm? I beg your pardon?” Gregory seemed reluctant to turn away from Helen, but good manners got the better of him.

“Surely this was the opportunity to put distance between you and your brother?”

“It wasn’t my decision. My mother begged me to take him.” He picked up his wine glass, held it to the light, then put it back down again, untouched. “I gave her my word I’d watch out for him. I’d hoped he would be grateful and perhaps attempt to … modify … his behaviour at least. After all, after what happened in Edin—” Gregory stopped, reached for his glass again, sipped quickly, then banged it back down clumsily, a few drops of red wine staining the pristine tablecloth. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to burden you with this, Evie.”

“You’re not burdening me, rest assured. I’m a minister’s daughter and a doctor’s wife. There’s not much I haven’t heard or seen before.” She pressed on, hoping he wouldn’t be offended by her persistence. “So?”

“There was a woman. A married woman. Cameron … She …” He picked up the glass again, drained it this time, then put it down slowly. “She died.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“My mother was distraught, mortified. Appalled, really. The woman was … had been … one of her closest friends. It was best that Cameron leave Scotland.”

“Yes, I can see that.”

“You’d think he’d have learnt … but look. Just look at him.”

The suave younger man was pulling Gertie to her feet, leading her out to the dance floor as the band struck up, drawing her in close, too close.

“Well, at least Gertie isn’t married …”

“Not yet, no. I have it on good authority, however, that our young widow is on her way to South Africa to join her new fiancé. A very wealthy man, by all accounts. I fear this won’t end well.”

“Evie, darling,” Fredi called over to her as he darted round to the side of her chair, “we simply must dance to this. It’s a new one for you – the cha-cha.”

“Oh Fredi,” Evie laughed, “I know I asked you to teach me, but—”

“No, no. I insist. You’ll have to dance in Blantyre. We can’t have you being a wallflower simply because the latest music passed your Highland parish by. Come on, darling!”

“Yes, go on, Evie,” Helen encouraged. “We three will watch you mesmerise the ballroom.”

“Gregory, I’m sorry, I—”

“Go on, Evelyn.” Gregory was already turning away and pulling his chair nearer to Helen, beaming at her as colour tinged his cheeks. Evie knew when she was beaten.

“Very well, but Ursula, it’s your turn next. I can’t possibly keep up with Fredi and you know he’ll want to dance all night.”

Evie let herself be pulled into the music, glad that its volume made conversation impossible. She had a lot to think about.

*

“Dr Campbell rang,” a voice was saying as the door pushed open. Crockery rattled on a tin tray. “Said he’ll bring your visitor later today if he can.”

“Good morning, Celia.”

The nurse banged the tray down on the table beside the bed and turned, hands on hips, to look at Evie.

“Morning, Mrs Campbell. How you today?”

“Fit as a fiddle, my dear, sharp as a tack and bright as a button. Ready to go home, in fact.”

The nurse grunted what passed for a laugh at Evie’s familiar morning greeting and turned to pull the table over the bed.

“Best get you fed, then get you fancied up some in case this visitor comes. All the way from England, Dr Campbell said. Not many in here gets visitors from that far off. Royalty be coming next!” The nurse chuckled, her ample torso rippling with her mirth.

Knowing she meant no real harm, Evie tried to join in with a gentle laugh but ended up coughing instead.

“There, there, Mrs Campbell.” The nurse handed her a glass of tepid water. “You sip this, be right as rain.”

Evie did as she was told, wondering, as she so often did, why people imagined a declining body signified a decline in mental age.

After a restless night, Lexy was feeling a little calmer as she sipped iced tea in the shade of the verandah outside the hotel restaurant. The fruits she’d ordered over an hour ago as a token gesture towards a healthy breakfast were already wilting as they sat untouched on the plate in front of her, her mind still preoccupied with the note. It had unnerved her, but she wouldn’t let it throw her off track. She would just have to be wary. Trust no one. Yes, it was scary, but she wouldn’t allow herself to be bullied. It might just be a prank, a … a … She couldn’t begin to think why anyone might do something like that. She remembered the figure she thought she’d seen in the shadows of the trees outside Ursula’s flat in Edinburgh. Was someone watching her, following her after all? If so, it had to be something to do with Ursula, and the only thing that could be was something to do with her mysterious son. Retired hospital matrons of exemplary character hardly merited such cloak-and-dagger attention otherwise. No. If anything, Lexy should look on this as evidence that she had a good chance of getting to the bottom of all this and that was why someone was trying to frighten her off.

Well, top marks for the pep talk, Lex,
she thought to herself, and before she could start picking holes in her spurious reasoning she pulled Ursula’s folder from the backpack she’d brought down with her and which was bulging once again. She wasn’t letting any of this out of her sight now. She was no longer sure the mess she’d discovered when she’d scuttled back to her room to avoid the odious Pendleton had been of her own doing. She could easily believe someone had searched her things. So far, she’d discovered nothing missing, but then she couldn’t be sure. She had no idea exactly what was amongst Ursula’s papers, something she now intended to rectify.

She had the verandah to herself this late in the morning, so she kicked off her sandals and curled her feet up under her in the wide winged chair, no longer surprised by the creaks of wicker that accompanied her movements. She put Ursula’s note to Izzie to one side and picked up the next batch of papers, held together by a paper clip in the top-left corner. It had rusted a little, leaving a brown imprint on the top page when she pulled it off. Fanning the papers out, she saw some were headed by dates and place names; all were written in that same copperplate she recognised from the photograph albums, but not all were as neatly composed, nor as well preserved. Some pages were splattered with exuberant punctuation, capital letters, underlinings; others appeared water-stained and blotchy; or creased as if they’d been crumpled and then smoothed flat again. There were scratchings-out in some places, as if the writing had fallen prey to some wartime censor’s pen. All the pages, she realised, had been ripped from a notebook, clearly a diary or journal of some sort, and even though they were now all bundled together, variation in the colours of papers and inks showed Lexy they hadn’t all been torn from the same book. Selected extracts from Ursula’s diaries?

Lexy remembered her mother telling her how Ursula wrote every day without fail and then locked the diary in her desk drawer. As a child, Izzie had been intrigued by them, desperate to read these secret stories. One day she’d seen the key left in the lock and, unable to resist, she’d just been opening the drawer and reaching in when Ursula’s hand had landed heavily on her small shoulder; she spun her round and shouted at her, for the first and only time Izzie could remember. Izzie never said what it was that Ursula had actually shouted; the shock of the angry voice enough, the lesson learned.

“You see, Lexy, everyone can shout and be angry. That’s easy. It’s much harder, but much more effective, to exercise control, judicious use of your temper.”

The young Lexy had been puzzled. “What does that mean?”