The Crimson Rooms (14 page)

This day, on the other hand, promised a less precarious kind of pleasure. Meredith had the knack of simply accepting things as they came, whether it was that the sun was now shining so warmly and steadily that the few remaining clouds were visibly melting away or that the tide was timed to perfection, on the way out and revealing a bit of sand amid the pebbles, which allowed Edmund to build a shallow trench down to the water. Even the picnic was perfect, because Meredith had bought a few little extras from the baker and given a substantial tip to the servants for their trouble. “She will
ruin
those girls,” said Prudence, “they are overpaid as it is.”

After lunch, indifferent to the fact that she was revealing an eye-catching stretch of shapely lower leg, Meredith lay on the pebbles with her jacket behind her head. Edmund was befriended by a bossy girl a couple of years younger, whose frilled skirt was tucked firmly into her knickers and who insisted he help her create a gigantic face, complete with mustache and eyebrows, of pebbles and seaweed. So I too lay back, closed my eyes, and let the tumultuous week draw away from me in the waves falling and falling, the shocks and journeys and the new faces of demanding people: Leah Marchant, Meredith herself, poor Stephen Wheeler in his prison cell, and Nicholas Thorne, curse him, whose smile hovered in my inner eye like the Cheshire Cat’s, even he was fading and mingling with the call of seagulls.

Except that a fly was tickling my throat and then the back of my hand—no, not a fly, Meredith, who fluttered a stalk of dried seaweed over my skin. “Tell me about the murder scene,” she said. Her face overshadowed mine, but behind her the sky was now a vibrant blue. She had removed her hat so that her fine hair was blown up in wisps of reddish gold.

It was as if I was drugged; I couldn’t at first think what she meant and my voice slurred with drowsiness. “Murder scene? I’ve never visited a murder scene.”

“But you went to the dead woman’s house.”

“You know I did, to collect the defendant’s clothes.” Meredith was propped on her elbow so close I couldn’t move. Her eyes, huge and inquisitive, trapped me.

“What was it like, to be in that poor woman’s house?”

“Sad.”

We stared at each other. I could see each individual lash, and yes, I’m sure hers were painted. “And what else?”

“Bleak. You know, hopeless.”

“Why hopeless?”

“Well, obviously, the marriage had come to an awful end.”

“But
things
are not usually hopeless. Things are just things. Anyway, did you find any clues?”

“We weren’t looking for clues.”

“Oh yes you were, I’ll bet you were. I’ve read my detective novels, I know the score.”

So there I was, literally breast to breast with Meredith, and there was the dead Stella Wheeler with her dank kitchen and seductive nightdress. And behind Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler were other, even more uncomfortable associations with their tragedy, not least the encounter outside Toynbee Hall, the fan swinging around and around in the little café, Nicholas Thorne adjusting the fabric in the knee of his trousers. “We shouldn’t talk about the Wheeler case,” I murmured. “For a start, I don’t know much about it, and anyway, this is the weekend, I don’t want to think about work.”

“But it’s in all the papers. I’m fascinated that the instant we arrive in London, Edmund’s aunty gets caught up in a murder inquiry. Surely you can tell me what’s going to happen next.”

“I don’t know. Nothing, according to the police. They seem to think it’s cut-and-dried.”

“Do
you
think it’s cut-and-dried?”

“Mr. Breen is not satisfied. He says there is no motive. We are to pursue our own investigations alongside the police, who he doesn’t think will do a thorough job, because they believe the evidence against Wheeler is overwhelming. So I’m to visit where Stella was a waitress, and Theo Wolfe, who also works for Mr. Breen, will talk to Stephen Wheeler’s colleagues. Wheeler himself still hasn’t said a word.”

“That doesn’t surprise me. Quite the reverse. In the war, in the hospitals, I saw quite a few men who couldn’t or wouldn’t speak because of what they’d seen or done. But you can’t blame me for being interested. What you deal with is so vital, don’t you see? And it fascinates me how the intensely private, the circumstances of the dead girl’s marriage, becomes a matter that is so public because of a crime. It was the same for me when I worked in hospitals. Although sickness is a very intimate state, it makes a person public property. I never could get used to the mix of the extremely personal and the fact that everything went on in full view of dozens of others. After all, it was in those circumstances that I came to know your brother James.”

His name jolted me wide-awake. She was still hanging over me and there was a gleam in the back of her eye, perhaps in anticipation of my reaction. I was tempted to reach out my hand and push her aside, as if it was just her body that blocked my view of him. “Tell me,” I whispered, “when you knew him, what was he like?”

“What was he like?” she repeated lightly, as if discussing the cut of a frock. “Why, he was like all the others, I suppose. Ill. Sick of the war.”

“Describe him to me, please, as you knew him.”

“Well, let’s see now. I hardly knew him for long. You, on the other hand, were his sister all his life.” She had clasped her hands between her breasts but still knelt with her face inches from mine. “So I’ll trade you, Evelyn. First you tell me what he was like as a little boy.” And she flung herself on her back, spread her arms wide, and closed her eyes.

In a flash of irritation—she was toying with me, surely, and must know how much this conversation meant to me—I sat up so suddenly that I was dizzy. Colors melded together in a bewildering soup of sparkle and glare until at last, by pulling the brim of my hat firmly across my brow, I could focus on Edmund, who was making a laborious journey up from the sea with his bucket.

“I want Edmund to have a father,” said Meredith, tapping my forearm softly with her fist, “that’s partly why I’m here. I want him to have a past as well as a future. So conjure up the young James.”

“He was like Edmund to look at, though perhaps a little plumper in the face and taller for his age. Very determined, single-minded, affectionate.”

“Yes, that’s Edmund exactly. What else?”

“I was thinking when we first came down to the sea today that I remember James very clearly, Jamie, he was then, on our seaside holidays. He always was a perfectionist. We holidayed each year in Cornwall, near Padstow, and he loved to build sandcastles but woe betide us if the sea came in too suddenly or a dog sprang on his creation. He couldn’t stand it.”

“And when he couldn’t stand something what did he do?”

She folded her hands behind her head so that her slight body was arched and I could see her ribs and the outline of her breast through the gauzy fabric of her frock. And again I was disturbed by the memory of Stella Wheeler’s underwear drawer, the too-dainty knickers and the unseemly bust-flattener that had once defined the shape of her upper body. A pulse throbbed softly in Meredith’s throat and her jaw and cheekbones were so fine and small that she appeared fragile. I chose my words with great care, as I had already learned to do with Meredith. “Got angry, I suppose, like most children. Shouted. It never took long to calm him down. Overall he was a sweet-tempered boy.”

“On the other hand, I can’t imagine that
you
ever made a fuss about anything, even when you were little.”

But I would not be put off any longer. “And now, please, give me your impressions of James, those you don’t mind sharing.”

She didn’t open her eyes. “Well, you’ll be glad to hear that he bore his injury well. There had been talk at first of amputation, and when he heard his arm would heal he pretended to be relieved, but I saw in his eyes what I’d seen in others’—that even losing a limb would have been a small price to pay for being sent home for good. But he soon covered that up. And when he was better . . .”

I found that I had gripped her hand: “Yes . . .”

“He was quite noisy—loud with his fellow officers, but he was touching too in the way he’d sit by the beds of the men and read them letters or write for them, awkwardly, with his uninjured hand.”

I saw him so clearly with his head bent, that beautiful inclination of the neck, and his bottom lip pushed forward. But I was not allowed to dwell on this image, because Meredith had leaped to her feet, picked up her hat, and said: “I’m off to explore this
authentic
seaside town. Keep your eye on Edmund, will you,” and with a scrunch of pebbles, she was gone.

I couldn’t fathom her. One moment we were exchanging confidences, the next she had deserted me so suddenly that I felt abused, as if she’d helped me up with one hand and knocked me down with the other. And, as was the case so often with her, I had the distinct impression that she had taken a good deal from me but given little in return.

So I was left on the beach with Edmund, who at that moment came running up to say that his new friend, Moira, was going to bathe and he would as well. Tearing off his shirt and sun hat, he raced away as fast as the pebbles would permit and was soon at the water’s edge with Moira, who was bare-footed but otherwise fully clothed. I called after him to wait for me but he didn’t or wouldn’t hear. Moira’s parents were snoozing in deck chairs, so I seized my bag, pushed my feet into my shoes, and ran after him, muttering to myself: “This is absurd, he shouldn’t paddle so soon after lunch, disobedient child. Where is Meredith? She should be here to look after him.” And then I decided with horror that I was turning into Prudence, in fact I must surely look like her in my city shoes and flapping dark skirt on that sun-struck Sussex beach.

Back I went to the picnic blanket and removed, with great difficulty, shoes and stockings, then my hat, hitched up my skirts, and staggered over the stones. My unaccustomed feet looked like beached-up water creatures and my progress was very slow, because my hair blew across my eyes and I stubbed my toes. The next moment, I had caught up with Edmund and Moira and was holding each by their cold, wet hands as we jumped the waves. Moira instantly pulled away and announced she was going back to her mother. Edmund, gratifyingly, stayed with me.

“I used to jump the waves with your daddy when we were children,” I said. “We loved the sea.”

“I don’t have to hold your hand. Mommy lets me paddle without holding her hand.”

“But I feel I must, Edmund, because I remember I lost your daddy once, when he was a little boy. I wouldn’t want to lose you.”

“How did you lose him?”

“He was angry with me and he walked away when I wasn’t looking. We found him back at the guesthouse, on his bed, reading an annual. By then half the town was searching for him, even the police.”

“Why was he angry with you?”

“He got bored, I think that was it.”

“Well, I’m not bored.” And he plunged forward and ducked his shoulders under the water then rose up, flapping his thin arms, stamping his feet, and shouting. “It’s freezing. It’s lovely. It’s so cold.”

Suddenly, like a new wave breaking, I was happy; my purest moment of happiness since James’s death—no, long before, since war was declared and we knew he would have to go away. The only times that had come anywhere close were my graduation and the news that I was to be taken on by Breen, but both these events had been tempered by my family’s ambivalence to them. It was the collision of water, sun, and memory, the blue horizon, the sudden bond with my newfound nephew, the touch of his wet hand, the way he had flashed me a delighted smile as he emerged from the water, his prancing figure. And beyond Edmund, the context of that day felt very promising, the fact that my work, awaiting me like a sleeping beast, in that moment seemed to me full of fascination and complexity. And at the back of all, an illicit tick on the very far edge of my consciousness, was Thorne. I had an absurd wish that he might see me like this, with my hair blown up in a cloud and my feet bare.

And perhaps I was happy to be in the present, because I’d remembered vividly the pain of the past as I took Edmund’s hand: the lying on my stomach in the sand reading
Great Expectations
, and Mother’s sleepy question: “Where’s Jamie, Evie, can you see him?” Then the search, escalating to a frantic trawl of the beach, my father’s return from his walk—“What do you mean he’s lost? I thought you were keeping an eye on him.” Father had stood in his cravat, panama, and blazer, one hand on the small of his back, the other shielding his eyes as he renewed the hunt. We had to begin from the beginning, because he couldn’t believe we had looked properly in the first place.

In the end I was sent up to the guesthouse half a mile or so from the beach, just to check that he wasn’t there, and I was so panicky that I could scarcely breathe. In the last few minutes before I discovered him, keeping a nervous lookout for me over the top of
The Boys’ Own Annual
, I had a glimpse into a future without him and I saw that my family would be a husk and that I would spend the rest of my days as if forever running uphill in an attempt to find him.

But for the first time, today, with chill waves lapping my toes and this other little boy boldly doggy-paddling between breaking waves, I had a sense that even though James was gone, my life was full enough.