Cool Repentance (8 page)

Jemima found herself alone with Spike Thompson at the now deserted picnic scene - alone except for the Blagges, that is. It was the polite but embarrassing presence of the Blagges which decided her. Taking off her own shirt and trousers, to reveal a new white bikini which she was not at all averse to displaying, she cast an inviting smile in the direction of Spike.

'Our turn,' said Jemima. Spike looked distinctly disappointed when she tugged him off in the direction of the sea, much as Cherry had pulled away Julian Cartwright.

'So many swimmers. Even Her—' Mrs Blagge gestured back to the group of trees to which Christabel had retreated. 'You'd better get the boat, Jim. If you meant what you said this morning about the breeze at the point.' So Mr Blagge departed in the direction of the boat pulled up on a steep bank of pebbles near the river bed. After a bit Mrs Blagge vanished too.

The fire smoked and went out. Only the seagulls still whirled round the deserted picnic site for a while; then they too flew away. The breeze at the point did blow up a little, making a few white crests on the waves outside the bay. The tide started to come in, very fast over the level sands. There was still no one present where the picnic had once been.

Jemima Shore had just changed back into her clothes in the group of trees near the cars, and was busy towelling her thick hair, dripping with sea-water, when the screaming began.

It seemed to come from a little knot of bathers - all men - advancing together through the shallow waters to the edge of the beach. They were moving curiously slowly, staggering slightly. That was because they were carrying something, something heavy. With a sick feeling Jemima recognized the ridiculous black and white bathing-cap Christabel Cartwright had been mocking only a few hours before, and the turquoise bathing-costume.

The person who was screaming was Blanche Cartwright. She was facing the advancing party and their burden.

Blanche Cartwright was screaming: 'Mummy, Mummy, Mummy.'

7

Her Last Hour

In death Christabel Cartwright's face looked quite young and vulnerable. Even her body appeared slighter and more childish than the full middle-aged figure Jemima remembered.

Julian Cartwright and Victor Marcovich were taking it in turns to kneel over her urgently trying to breathe some movement back into that sodden body, or knead some beat from its still heart. For how long? - it seemed like hours. Now Julian was kneeling back on his haunches with a look of despair on his face. Vic Marcovich bent forward again. Ollie Summertown had rushed past Jemima, still in his striped bathing-shorts, to get help; she heard the angry whirr of his motor-bike ascending the track from the beach to the village.

Christabel's eyes were closed. A strand of fair hair escaped the black and white cap and lay along the pale cheek: the sight of that, no longer fluffy, no longer the bright colour of a daffodil, was unbearably touching.

It was at that moment that Jemima realized that she was looking into the dead face of Filumena Lennox, Filly Lennox with her pretty full youthful body, in Christabel Cartwright's vivid turquoise costume. Filly Lennox with her fair hair escaping from Christabel Cartwright's magpie cap. She realized it a split second before she heard the characteristic melodious voice of Christabel herself calling from a distance.

'I'm here. What is it? What's the matter, Blanche? Do stop screaming "Mummy, Mummy" like that, darling.'

But Blanche did not stop screaming. She merely transferred her renewed cries in the direction of her mother, who was now advancing rapidly towards the little group at the edge of the sea, and the body of Filly Lennox where the men had laid her. In contrast to the bathers, Christabel still looked inappropriately smart in her diaphanous leopard-skin printed robe. Her hair stood up from her head like a golden aureole.

'Oh Mummy, Mummy, it's not you, it's not you. I thought it was you.' Blanche's voice rose hysterically and then she burst into tears just as Christabel reached them.

The men who had carried Filly Lennox's body included Gregory Rowan as well as two of the actors. He stood slightly apart from the group round the body. It was to Gregory that Christabel turned, rather distractedly, as though she could not quite take in what had happened, did not quite believe it even now, thought it was all a delusion, a joke perhaps, in spite of the manifest presence of poor Filly's drowned body, lying there on the shore, with Victor Marcovich kneeling beside her, still rather hopelessly massaging her chest.

'Darling, what's she doing in my costume?' she asked. 'And that's my funny magpie hat - I was looking for it. Why did she take it?' Christabel put her hand on Gregory's arm. 'Why is she dressed—'

'Christabel, be quiet, the girl is dead.' It was Julian Cartwright who interrupted his wife as though determined to put an end to these frantic and embarrassing enquiries. He moved and put his arm protectively round her. For a moment Christabel stood thus between Julian and Gregory. Then Gregory moved away.

Like Julian, he spoke heavily, almost wearily: 'She must have changed her mind and swum after me. I teased her about not daring to take a dip. But she wouldn't come. And so I left her. Oh my God, the poor, poor child.'

'That was because she couldn't swim really, or at least not very well.' Tobs sounded pathetically eager as though an explanation of her behaviour might actually bring Filly back to life.

'Yes, she told me this morning she definitely wasn't going to swim. We're sharing digs in Larminster. And then Filly washed her hair specially to look nice at the picnic, so I suppose she took the cap—' Emily Jones began to cry, but quietly, not like Blanche, leaning her head on Tobs's shoulder. 'She was so excited at meeting
you,'
Emily sobbed, nodding her head in the direction of Gregory. 'Properly. Not in the theatre.'

'You see, darling, I fell asleep under the cliffs in my old nook.' Christabel was rattling on, although it was not quite clear whom she was addressing. 'I left my things under the trees in the old place where I always used to change, and then, it was so hot, and I felt so sleepy - all that claret I suppose - we should really serve white wine at picnics in future, darling—'

'Christabel, stop,' said Julian Cartwright in an urgent voice. Jemima realized that Christabel was trembling so hard that her long gold necklaces with their pendent sea-shells shook together.

'When I came back from my nap under the cliff,' she finished more calmly, 'the costume and hat were both gone. I was desperate to swim
after my nap. I was livid. I lay down again under the cliff and tried to cool
off’

The arrival of Regina, leading Lancelot through the shallow splashing surf from the opposite direction of the eastern cliff, created a diversion. Still in her red costume, with her wet black hair hanging down her back, Regina looked slightly threatening as though she might carry away Filly's body on her horse's crupper like some modern Valkyrie. When told the news of Filly's death, she turned quite white, and stammered something which was probably a quotation from Webster since it sounded like 'She died young', before lapsing into silence.

Even more bizarre was the appearance of Mr Blagge, rowing his boat towards the shore, up the channel of the river. If Regina had fleetingly resembled a Valkyrie, Mr Blagge had the uncomfortable air of a Charon come to row the dead girl away to some oceanic Hades.

His words, when he heard the news, were spoken in a voice rough and cracked with emotion: 'This is at your door,' he cried turning in the direction of Christabel, adding after a pause with terrible polite incongruity: 'Madam. Our boy, this girl—' he continued wildly, looking round at Jemima and Spike Thompson, then at the still weeping Emily Jones, as though appealing for confirmation. He was wearing a khaki waterproof jacket and trousers which presumably concealed the neat suit in which he had served lunch: the outfit gave him a vaguely military air.

'Jim.' The voice of Mrs Blagge, coming from behind them, sounded very sharp indeed. She had joined them from somewhere in the direction of the cars. At the same time Julian Cartwright with equal authority and a good deal of anger, exclaimed: 'That's enough, Blagge. We must all be careful not to upset poor Miss Lennox's friends further.' He emphasized the word 'all'.

Gregory put a comforting arm round Christabel again. It wasn't clear from her expression whether Christabel had taken in the extent of Mr Blagge's venom: she merely looked rather dazed. Then the arrival of Major Cartwright, still immaculate in his white suit and straw hat, meant that the news of Filly Lennox's death had to be broken all over again. Afterwards he kept repeating angrily: 'But what was the girl doing in
your
bathing-suit, Christabel?', thus making it clear where he thought the responsibility for the tragedy lay.

By the time the ambulance arrived, bringing with it rapid professional - but equally unsuccessful - attempts at resuscitation, the picnic party had been transformed into a very different kind of gathering. The story of the last hour in Filumena Lennox's life had also been pieced together -more or less. Rather less than more, thought Jemima. But that thought she kept to herself for the time being, along with some other thoughts on the subject of the untimely death of a young woman, not totally unlike

Christabel Cartwright in type and colouring, wearing Christabel Cartwright's conspicuous turquoise bathing-costume and magpie hat.

Gregory Rowan was the last person who had actually spoken to Filly Lennox - on the shore among the trees - but he was by no means the last person to have seen her. Several people had caught sight of her in the sea or at any rate of the striking black and white hat bobbing about in the water; but of course everyone had assumed they were looking at Christabel.

After Gregory Rowan had left Filly, he had waded into the sea in his favourite place, under the western cliff, on the other side of the river which divided the shore in half; he had deliberately swum away from the merry gathering on the other side of the little bay. 'For peace,' he said. Jemima guessed that he had also privately decided to dispense with a bathing-costume, in his preferred fashion, and had not wished to advertise the fact. So that when Filly decided, literally, to take the plunge, she had gone to look for him in quite the wrong direction.

Ketty volunteered that a figure in a black and white cap had passed her, striking out rather slowly, in view of the waves, in the general direction of the point: 'I
did
think it was rather unwise.'

Ketty, in her tight-lipped way, was obviously very shaken by the incident, and evidently blamed herself for not warning the girl about the tide and the currents. 'Believing it however to be Mrs Cartwright and believing she would remember - she couldn't have forgotten that - she used to swim there all the time - once - believing it was my duty to look after the girls
...
Besides, Jim Blagge was out there somewhere with the boat. He should have helped her.'

But Jim Blagge was one of the few people who had apparently not seen Filly in her magpie cap, Julian Cartwright being another.

Blanche confirmed that she had seen Filly swimming - 'But it was Mummy, I knew it was Mummy, that was the whole point.' Blanche was on the verge of howling again before Julian Cartwright curtly indicated to Ketty that she should put an end to these hysterics.

Regina's contribution was briefer: 'I swam alone and saw no one and nothing.' Then she added illogically: 'I thought it was Mummy anyway,' and burst into tears. But unlike her sister, she cried quietly.

All the actors had swum in the end, or at least paddled, with the exception of Old Nicola and Major Cartwright. After lunch, at which she had drunk at least her fair share of claret, Nicola had adjourned to the upper shore. Here she had plonked herself down on a comfortable chair unwillingly abstracted by Mrs Blagge from the Cartwright Land-Rover. Robbed of the company of the Major - who rapidly backed away from the prospect of a further tete-a-tete on the subject of the British Raj -Nicola settled down to a little post-prandial sport with the triumphant words: 'Time to watch you naughty boys and girls.' Out of a dark-grey plastic bag which had itself seen better days, she had produced a shapeless mass of knitting of roughly the same colour. (It was part of their power struggle that Nat Fitzwilliam was quite determined Old Nicola should not produce her own knitting on stage during
Widow Capet
but she had by no means conceded the point.) And then Old Nicola had noticed Filly Lennox staggering towards the sea.

'Staggering, my dears. I'm afraid there's no other word for it. The poor girl was quite - well, you know. She was laughing too, and singing. That Iron Boy song you wouldn't let her sing before, "Cool Repentance". Not that she had anything much to repent about, the poor little duck. And some of the other Iron Boy songs. She looked very happy. I dare say it was a very happy death. We should all try to look at it like that.'

This picture of Filly Lennox, weaving and laughing her way towards the sea, Ophelia-like, singing snatches of songs - worst of all the banned songs of Iron Boy - upset everyone anew. Jemima saw that Tobs's eyes were wet.

'Of course I
knew it wasn't Christabel!' continued Nicola. 'I wasn't fooled for a moment. Much smaller bottom. We all spread out as the years pass, don't we my dear?' The old woman turned to Christabel with a well-delivered conspiratorial look. 'And you really have lived well over the past few years, haven't you? Which is funny, because my friend Susan Merlin told me you were absolutely starving in a garret—'

Some of the members of the company remembered amid the general embarrassment that Christabel for one had been strongly opposed to the introduction of Old Nicola into the Larminster Festival. 'She's a positive croaking raven; give me Susan Merlin any time even if she can't remember more than one line in three
...
at least that line comes from the right play
...'
Old Nicola had evidently nosed out Christabel's hostility.

Now feeling that she had created enough trouble for one day, Nicola finished her account of Filly's passage to the sea by timing it precisely, 'Four o'clock. On the dot. I looked at my watch. No, I never make that kind of mistake.' In a lower voice, she added: 'And wasn't one of you naughty boys giving her a bit of a cuddle in the sea? Or was it just a girl giving her a helping hand? I've got eyes in my head, you know. At least it wasn't you, Major, do you remember, you went for a walk onto the cliffs, spying on all the pretty girls where they were changing, I saw you, you old rascal.'

Major Cartwright, curtly denying the motive, did admit the walk. And since Old Nicola did not name the cuddler - or the helper — and nobody had mentioned encountering her in the sea, that parting shot was not thought to be particularly important by the company in general: merely part of Old Nicola's general propensity towards malice. Jemima Shore, who did note it vaguely, pushed the remark to the back of her mind for the time being.

After Nicola lost sight of Filly Lennox, the girl had been alone.

Alone with no one to warn or help her, she had taken the treacherous route to exactly where the currents made by the river debouching its subterranean waters were most dangerous. Somewhere out there a sudden freak wave breaking - not an uncommon occurrence - must have taken her by surprise, filled her mouth with water, then her lungs
...
No one of course had seen her getting into difficulty or waving for help or heard her shouting - if she had been able to shout. No one said it aloud but everyone remembered how much Filly had drunk in the course of the picnic. Perhaps she never knew quite what was happening to her. Or perhaps Filly Lennox had waved, waved and struggled desperately for survival, and everyone near her had merely interpreted it as a cheerful salutation from Christabel Cartwright.