Past Caring (45 page)

“Do you think the Memoir is one last concealment by Strafford?”

“I must presume so. And yet . . . and yet, it won’t quite do, will it? If Edwin was ever to have given a full account of himself, the Memoir would have been it. So how can we just write it off ?”

“We can’t. That’s why I’m here.”

We drove down to The Maple Inn in Buriton and sat in the garden under a sunshade. I drank beer while Elizabeth sipped a sherry. It all seemed innocent and rather quaint, like taking a maiden aunt out for a treat. Only our talk was of darker stuff.

“There’s a question I must ask you.”

“Go ahead, my dear.”

“Strafford tormented himself over what he saw as an inexplicable rejection. We think he could have explained it himself but couldn’t bear to. Why didn’t you remove all doubts by simply confronting him with the evidence of his marriage?”

“Ah, remember that I didn’t know Edwin was in any doubt—why should he have been? I presumed he never intended to go through with our wedding, since that would have been criminal rather than merely deceitful. By continuing to insist he wanted to marry me, he seemed only to be tormenting me. And the last thing I wanted was argument or denial from him. I felt distressed and betrayed, in no condition to discuss anything. I wanted Edwin just to leave me alone.”

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“Even so . . .”

“There was another reason. Julia told me the information in strictest confidence. I was to say as little as possible about it, which wasn’t difficult, since I wanted to say nothing.”

Tea back at Quarterleigh. We sat in garden chairs by the edge of the brook.

“Do you remember Strafford’s nephew, Ambrose?” I asked.

“Why, yes.” Elizabeth smiled. “A charming boy. His parents weren’t sure about me when I visited Barrowteign with Edwin in the summer of 1909. I see from the Memoir that Florence Strafford was even more suspicious of me than I’d supposed. But Ambrose—well, he had a child’s trust and welcomed me to that house as one innocent receiving another.”

“You never considered going back to Barrowteign?”

“Hardly.”

“If you did, you’d find Ambrose still there—well, close at hand anyway. I looked him up last month: the last of his line. An old man now, of course, too fond of his cider and dwelling a bit in the past. But a generous host.”

Elizabeth shook her head. “Good lord. Dear little Ambrose—become an old man? It hardly seems possible. How is he?”

“As well as his drinking and age will allow. But . . . troubled.”

“By what?”

“Doubt, suspicion, unanswered questions.”

“Like his uncle?”

“No, about his uncle. What do you know about Strafford’s death?”

“It was in the paper—a railway accident near Barrowteign.

Gerald pointed it out to me. I think he was secretly rather relieved. For myself, I was sad but not unduly surprised. I was glad they said it was an accident but had my own opinion.”

“Suicide?”

“Call it that if you like. I think Edwin just walked away from life.”

“That’s not what Ambrose thinks.”

“I suppose he wouldn’t.”

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“He doesn’t think it was an accident either.”

“Then what?”

“Murder.” The setting—trickling water, a green lawn and soft sunshine—disinfected the word. I was glad of it. I didn’t want to haunt this old lady with Websterian visions, just bring something into the open, into unambiguous daylight.

Elizabeth sipped tea, as if to steady her nerves. “Extraordinary. Tell me more.” She said it without seeming to want more, rather with an air of duty.

So I told her more: of Strafford materializing at Barrowteign in the spring of 1951, of his strange behaviour there, of his unidentified visitors, of the night of his death, of Ambrose’s lurid version of events.

“Who does Ambrose think these . . . intruders . . . were?”

“He doesn’t have a clue.”

“Do you?”

“A clue? Yes. The Memoir is the only clue Strafford left us.

Who would have wanted—or needed—to threaten an old man returning from exile?” Elizabeth said nothing. “You said your husband was relieved to hear of Strafford’s death.”

“Yes, I did.” A long, thoughtful pause. “Tell me, Martin, why do you think Edwin returned from Madeira?”

“I don’t know. He finished the Memoir seven months before.

There’s no sign in it that he intended such a visit.”

“Quite the reverse, to my mind. Did something happen—something change—that drove him to come?”

“How can we tell?”

“I suppose we can’t. Not now.”

Elizabeth remained the most gracious and considerate of hostesses, asking over dinner how much I saw of Laura these days and never referring once to my disgrace in the eyes of her family.

But she also seemed more anxious than before, as if preparing—reluctantly and apprehensively—for something more significant than anything we’d so far said.

Later, as we sat in armchairs round the large fireplace in the drawing room, she insisted I have a glass of port, though she

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drank nothing stronger than coffee. Only then could she come to the point, and even then obliquely, with an apparently unnecessary question.

“When did I last meet Edwin, Martin?”

“Surely you don’t need to ask me that?”

“I’d like you to tell me.”

“Okay. It’s described in the Memoir. Hampstead Heath, January 1919.”

“Not so, I fear. I should have told you before, but it didn’t seem relevant. Now, in view of what Ambrose thinks, it has to be said. I last saw Edwin a month before he died—in early May 1951.”

So. The tables were turned. I’d surprised Elizabeth, but now she’d surprised me. Layer by layer, we were slowly approaching the truth. But what it was neither of us who sat swapping revelations in a cottage drawing room that evening had, even then, any idea.

“Tell me more.” I deliberately borrowed Elizabeth’s own phrase.

“There is a poem,” she said, in a cobwebbed voice, “by Thomas Hardy, which begins this story. Whenever I read it, I think of Edwin that day, though I’ve never spoken of it till now.

You’ll find a collection of Hardy’s poems in the bookcase behind your chair. Could you get it out and read one to me? You’ll find it in the section ‘Poems of 1912–13’.” I turned to it. “After a Journey.” I found the page and began to read.

“ ‘Hereto I come to view a voiceless ghost . . .’ ”

“No,” she said gently. “Next verse.”

“ ‘Yes: I have re-entered your olden haunts at last:

‘Through the years, through the dead scenes I have tracked you;

‘What have you now found to say of our past—

‘Scanned across the dark space wherein I have lacked you?’ ”

“Enough.” The command struck a plangent note. “Those four lines, so evocative, so appropriate, so very much Edwin. We both loved Hardy and Edwin knew I would recognise that verse, which he used to re-introduce himself when he came back. It announced his coming.”

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“How?”

“Well, Gerald retired from active business in 1945 and we handed the house in Hampstead over to Henry. He’d just married and it seemed right that he should raise a family there as we had.

That’s when we bought this cottage. But Gerald kept an interest in the firm to the very end and would stay with Henry whenever he went up there. As it happened, what I’m about to describe took place during one of those trips, so that I was alone here apart from Rose, the housekeeper we had before Dora.

“I couldn’t tell you the exact date, but it was a weekday early in May 1951. Rose came in to say that, as she’d been returning from some shopping in the village, a man had stopped her at the gate and asked her to deliver a note to me. He’d been emphatic that it was for my eyes only and had gone on to say that, if I wished to speak to him about the contents, he would be in the churchyard until six o’clock.

“The note was that verse of Hardy’s you’ve just read to me. It wasn’t signed, but I knew the hand, and, when I pressed Rose for a description of the man, it sounded like Edwin grown old. He’d come a long way and time had healed my hurts. So there was no question of my refusing the invitation, though I made myself wait until past five o’clock before going over to the churchyard.

“There was a thin drizzle falling and I could see somebody sheltering from it in the lych-gate. I knew immediately that it was Edwin, still a commanding figure though a little stooped with age, his shoulders rather hunched, hands buried in his greatcoat pockets. He had his back to me as I came along the path and didn’t turn round until I called his name.

“ ‘So you came,’ he said. I just nodded. ‘Thank you.’ I told him there was no need to thank me and asked how he was. ‘Well,’ he said, but, though he looked fit enough, he seemed and sounded weary—more so than even his age justified. He apologized for luring me from the house, spoke courteously but distantly, as if unable quite to believe that we were once again talking to each other. Then I put the only question I could put.

“ ‘Why have you come, Edwin?’

“ ‘Just to see you, one more time.’

“ ‘But why now?’

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“He didn’t answer that, just asked how life was treating me. I said I was happy and content, which was true. I couldn’t draw him on his own life. He said there was nothing to say about it.

Instead, he wanted to know about mine—my family affairs, all that I’d done since marrying Gerald. He didn’t sneer or protest, as he once would have done, just listened, rather pensively, nodded occasionally, asked more, gently inquisitive, questions. I didn’t mind telling him. I could bear all the old heartache and speak to him dispassionately. It all felt curiously like an interview, as if Edwin were weighing my achievements in life. It didn’t even seem particularly strange that he should be doing so.”

“But why would he have been?”

“I don’t know. He’d never been, except in desperate moments, an outspoken man, but that day he was more reticent than ever, like a concerned, self-effacing godparent. I thought it might be contrition as much as anything, so let him be as silent as he wanted to be.

“We went for a stroll round the village. Edwin asked about its history and character, why we’d chosen it, what I planned to do there. As I say, it was all deceptively anodyne.”

“What do you mean: deceptively?”

“I mean that Edwin was probing for something, subtly and patiently, and I was letting him. I didn’t object because there was nothing to object to. He didn’t raise the great issue that lay between us and, out of a kind of relief that he wasn’t still harbouring some resentment, I was happy to talk about almost anything else. Yet there was some purpose in our pleasantries, something I couldn’t discern behind his gentlemanly interrogation. Then he said a strange thing: ‘I’ve met Henry, your son.’

“ ‘Of course,’ I replied. ‘The last time we met.’ I was hoping that this didn’t presage a reopening of old wounds. But it didn’t.

“ ‘Do you think he takes after his father?’ he asked. I said I thought he did and that it had always pleased me to note the resemblance. He made no more of that.

“I asked how he had travelled to the village and he said that he had walked from the railway station. The nearest one then was Singleton, but that was five miles, a fair step for an old man, so I offered to drive him back.

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“On our way, Edwin seemed to bring himself to say a little of what he had come to say. He left it until we were driving through Singleton—almost the latest he could, which suggested to me that he had had to screw up his nerves for it. ‘The reason I came,’

he said, almost in an undertone, ‘was to see if I still love you.’

Then, without waiting for me to speak: ‘And the curse of it is that I do.’

“I pulled to a halt at the railway station. It was quiet there that evening and we were quite alone. I felt unnerved by his sudden declaration, worried that we wouldn’t, after all, part ami-cably.

“In fact, he at once reassured me. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’ll go quietly.’

“ ‘Edwin,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry.’

“ ‘There’s no need,’ he replied. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’ His admission implied an acceptance of guilt.

“ ‘That’s all I can find,’ I continued, ‘to say of our past.’

“ ‘Then let that be all.’

“So saying, he stepped from the car and walked quickly into the booking office. He paused at the door, turned, doffed his hat to me and then was gone.”

“What did you do?”

“I drove away. He didn’t seem to want me to wait until his train came and it seemed fitting not to do so. The leavetaking he had chosen had a quality of . . . reconciliation. I had once offered him forgiveness. Now, at last, he had accepted it. But forty years seemed a long time to have to wait. So I was pleased to make my peace with Edwin that day, pleased that we had met just once more.

“I told Gerald about Edwin’s visit when he returned from London. I didn’t want to keep it from him and, if I had tried to, I daresay Rose might have let it slip. Gerald was angry at Edwin for having come, though I told him there was no need to be. Still, he remained unhappy about him being back in England and that’s why he seemed relieved when, about a month later, we heard of his death.

“That’s when I first felt that I really knew Edwin’s purpose in visiting me. It was simply to put his mind and my mind at rest be-

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fore what I am sure was his calculated and dignified exit from life. Though I had never—except for a very short time—lost all of my affection for him—because some affection must always remain where love has been felt—it was only then, after forty years, that I recovered my respect for him.”