The Body on the Beach (The Weymouth Trilogy) (13 page)

The coachman dropped Mrs Wright off near the town bridge as they made their way back through Weymouth
after dinner
, with Mr Berkeley escorting Bob and his mama back to Sandsford on his own. Bob, tired out by the day’s exertions, was sitting on his knee, dozing. Kathryn was sitting quietly at their side. The rhythmic trotting of the horses, the slight sway of the carriage, the
closeness
of his shoulders to hers, the warm feeling that she always felt when she was alone with Andrew – all these gave her a sense of great contentment which over-rode her sense of guilt. She was pleased and grateful that he ha
d organised such a lovely day
.

They reached Sandsford at last and Mr Berkeley carried Bob out of the carriage whilst Kathryn stepped down and opened the house door. She was laughing at the two of them. They were both looking distinctly the worse for wear after their excursion up the pebbles. Mr Berkeley’s tailcoat had strands of seaweed upon it and Bob, she knew not how, had a brown smear all over his cheek which smelled suspiciously of fish. But just as she was teasing them about their shockingly disreputable appearance, which was totally unacceptable in two gentlemen who might want to impress the ladies, her attention was caught by something lying in the hallway. She stopped in mid sentence, and blanched. It was a pair of muddy boots, both lying discarded on the cold stone floor, and next to the boots was a leather travelling pack.

‘Giles is back,’ she breathed in horror, and at that very moment a rough voice assailed them from the depths of the parlour.

‘Kathryn. Is that you? Where in God’s name have you been?’ Giles followed his voice to the door. ‘Who gave you the permission to....And who the hell are you?’

Giles’s eyes had landed on Andrew, who still held little Bob in his arms. Andrew placed the child gently on the ground and advanced, hand outstretched, to greet him.

‘Berkeley, Mr Miller. Andrew Berkeley. Delighted to make your acquaintance, my good sir.’

Giles was a little nonplussed by this somewhat unconventional approach. He took the proffered hand almost without knowing it. Bob had retreated a little, and hid behind his mother’s skirts.

‘So...?’

‘I live in Belvoir House – over in Weymouth, you know,’ said Mr Berkeley, helpfully.

‘And what the hell has that got to do with anything? Why are you escorting my wife and son?’

‘We have been out on an excursion – on Portland, don’t you know
?
Mrs Miller is a good friend of my sister, Mrs Wright. She was kind enough to provide us with her company. It is my sister’s birthday, you see. My sister loves children and it was a treat for her to have Bob to entertain her for the day. Bob was too tired to walk back to Sandsford so I said
that
I would drop them off before going home.’

Giles was slightly mollified, although he remained somewhat suspicious. He let it go, however, and turned tail back into the parlour.

Mr Berkeley caught Kathryn’s eye as she prepared to show him out.

‘Thank you for today, Mr Berkeley,’ she whispered. ‘I am extremely obliged to you. Bob and I have had a really wonderful time. We will neither of us forget it in a very long while.’

Mr Berkeley smiled at her a little sadly,
patted
Bob
on the head
, jumped into his carriage, and ordered his coachman to take him straight back home to Belvoir.

Giles seemed genuinely pleased to see Kathryn when she managed to pluck up the courage to seek him in the parlour. She had placed Bob, silently, into Sally’s hands and taken a deep breath before putting her chin up and stepping firmly through the parlour door
to see him
. Giles had been standing staring out of the window and greeted her with open arms. She ran up to him and accepted the caress with as much complaisance as she could. She mentally thanked God that
despite her feelings
she had always done he
r utmost to maintain her faithfulness
to Giles.

‘So, tell me all your news, Giles,’ she invited, taking him by the ha
nd and leading him to the sofa
. ‘You have been gone an immense time – it must have been exciting for you?’

‘I have had a monstrous good time, though I missed you, Kitty. Many’s the time I wished you were by my side. But I got the business done and made some good connections. Cutlass may well have more work for me at some time,’ here he looked at her a little shiftily.
‘I could do with the extra kelter
, that’s for sure.’

‘So tell me all about it, my love. It has felt quite strange and empty since you’ve been gone.’

Giles
proceeded
to tell her all about his time in London – where he had stayed, what he had seen, who h
e had met with. To Kathryn it
sound
ed
little enough to keep him occupied for the best part of two months but she
forbore
to comment and tried to sound as interested as he would expect her to be by asking him some questions and assuring him of her pleasure in his enjoyment of the trip.

‘And what about you, Kitty? How have you been spending your time? And who is this chap’s sister – the one who brought you home? I have not heard mention of her before.’

‘Oh, his sister is Mrs Wright. She lives by the quay in Weymouth. We saw each other in
Harvey’s
library. We somehow found out that we are
exactly
of an age and had something in common immediately. I have visited her for ever, although she doesn
’
t get up to Sandsford very much.’

Although her
account was truthful
as far as it went,
Kathryn
was concerned to find that she felt totally unable to
tell her husband
the whole story – that she had found Mr Berkeley on the beach, looked after him for a week at Sandsford House with just Sally and Tom as chaperones, and befriended his sister only after that. Despite telling herself that there was nothing
for her to
feel guilty about – that she had done nothing wrong – the
very fact that she could
n
’
t
bring herself to
be entirely truthful with
Giles
shocked her
more than she could say
.
Perhaps she should have foreseen his return. Perhaps she should have rehearsed how best to tell him the truth. Perhaps she had not fully considered how her behaviour over the past two months might seem.
However, as soon as she had told him this half truth she
also
realised that there could be no goin
g back. She could only pray to G
od that
he should be merciful to her and help her to be less drawn to Mr Berkeley in the future
than she had been
up to now
. In any event
her somewhat sketchy explanation
appeared to satisfy her husband
for now. He
had no real interest in Kathryn’s friends anyway, and in another moment he was talking to her again, telling her some tale about an overturning stage coach, and how he had been the only gentleman at all capable of assisting the coachman to right it and get it on its way again.

The evening slipped by easily enou
gh. Sally brought them some supp
er. Giles drank copious amounts of ale. Kathryn started to breathe a little more easily again although she was ever wary. She knew from past experience that he was perfectly capable of turning on her in an instant and any conversation with him would ever feel like walking on eggs. So she was more than pleased to hear the
grandfather clock
striking ten, hopeful
that she could reasonably escape him now.

‘I shall retire now, I think, Giles,’ she said, standing up to leave. Her husband looked her up and down a little leerily. ‘It has been a very long day.’

‘You do that, my pretty one. And I shall undress you,’ he said.

The next morning Giles awoke early, stretched luxuriously, and kissed Kathryn on the cheek. Kathryn, indeed, had lain awake for hours but was pretending still to be asleep. Giles, however, was not one to observe the niceties of life. He wanted her awake, so awakened she should be. He shook her until she knew that she could pretend no more. So she had to roll over towards him, open her eyes, and give him a shy little smile.

‘Let us go out together for the day, Kitty,’ he said. ‘I have missed you so much. I want to keep you all to myself for now.’

Kathryn had planned to visit Aunt Shepherd that day but she thought it politic to
comply wi
th her husband’s suggestion
.

‘I should enjoy that, Giles,’ she said. ‘Where do you plan for us to go?’

‘We shall visit the waterfall at Osmington Mill
s. It’
s some while since we went there. It should be in full flow at this time of year.’

Osmington was a village about three miles along the coast – a pretty
little
hamlet of a few fishermen’s cottages and a small thatched inn called the Osmington
‘
Crown
’
but
universally known to
the locals as ‘The Smugglers’ – and for very good reason. Kathryn had always enjoyed a walk there. The coastline thereabouts had much to recommend it, with tree clad valleys providing a charming contrast to the wildness of the cliffs
, thei
r craggy slopes sitting proudly above the sea. With a hazy sun promising fine weather for a change it should make for a delightful day out.

Leaving Bob in Sally’s capable care, Kathryn set out with her husband after breakfast and took the rough hilltop path from Sandsford along
the coast. Skylarks, rising from the ground, were filling the Spring air with joyous, tumultuous songs. Occasional flowering bushes rewarded the walkers with their scent, with bees buzzing noisily from one to the next
and buzzards calling to one another
as they circ
led high into the sky
. Giles took her hand as they walked. He chatted quite happily about some of the odd people he had encountered on the journeys to and from London. When he was like this Kathryn could almost remember what it was that had attracted her to him so much
in the first place
. He had seemed handsome, charming, willing to please. His dark eyes, which had followed her whe
rever she went that first Christmas
,
had
promised danger and excitement – a magnetism so very different from the plebeian mundanity of
George that
he had simply swept
her
off her feet. She could almost remember the sensations of that time
– the feeling of being attractive, of being desired, of being important to a glamorous, sought-after gentleman for the very first time, a gentleman whom all the other young ladies were talking about, and the gratification of being the one above all others that he had instantly preferred
.
She could almost remember those feelings.
Almost – but not quite. Because for ever lurking in her mind now were two uncomfortable truths. The first was that she could never feel perfectly secure with him ever again. The second was that her heart had now been totally and
irrevocably
taken over by someone other than him.

They reached the waterfall
by mid-day and stood together to
watch it for a moment. It marked the conclusion of a small stream which originated in the hillside above the village and plunged down in a narrow course from a rocky ledge onto the
bouldered seashore many feet
below. Kathryn had always been mesmerised by the sound of falling water
. She would have welcom
ed the opportunity of standing quietly there with her husband for a while, trying to regain her feelings for him, trying to reconcile herself to him once again. But Giles was a man of action, not of thought. He was not one to stand about, watching waterfalls. Almost as soon as they had reached it he wanted to be off again, clambering down the rocks, hunting for fossils. So she sighed softly to herself and allowed him to drag her down to the water’s edge, and join him in sifting through the pebbles on the beach. She scrabbled about without much enthusiasm for a few minutes and then became conscious that his eyes were resting upon her. She turned to look at him.

‘Is anything amiss, Giles?’ she asked him, a little nervously.

‘You’re a damned attractive wench, Kitty,’ he replied, a little thickly. ‘The way you bend over those pebbles...Come here to me for a minute.’

Kathryn was a little reluctant to obey. She recognised his look. 

‘Don’t be foolish, Giles,’ she said, attempting to laugh him off. ‘Somebody might see.’

‘Since when has it been foolish to admire your own wife? Come over here. I want to kiss you.’

She was very loath to comply. After all, although it seemed quite quiet, they were still on an open beach. There was no telling when anyone might suddenly appear. And yet she knew that her husband would have no hesitation in forcing himself upon her wherever – and whenever  - he chose. So she looked about her quickly. The rocks to her left were quite large. They would hide two people quite effectively
in case anyone
should
chance to
come by
.