The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton (19 page)

‘Do you think she’s all right?’ Frances said and then, ‘Sorry, stupid question. Stupid. Stupid.’

As they left the room she turned, hovered in the doorway, and then went downstairs. Laurence feared Walter would question them but he was sitting at the table, filling his pipe, and hardly seemed to notice their reappearance.

‘Did Maggie have any friends?’ Frances asked. ‘In the village, say?’

Walter looked at her as if surprised to find her in the room.

‘Not a young man I knew of, if that’s what you’re coming to. I wouldn’t ha’ allowed it. Not after her ma.’

‘A girl friend?’

Walter drew on his pipe and coughed, his gaze on the fire, which still smoked with no visible flame. It was obvious he’d had enough of them and Laurence turned to go. Walter tapped his surviving teeth together against the pipe stem before saying, ‘There’s Ann Hobson’s girl. Ruby.’ He fell silent again. ‘Bit simple.’ Another pause. ‘Sometimes when Maggie were younger she used to mind the Kilminster children. Their girl...’ He paused, obviously thinking. ‘Edna, no Ethel, she’s a bit younger. Sees a bit of her. Likes their dog.’ It was a long speech for the old man.

‘Is there any family?’ Laurence asked. ‘Or other relations?’

Walter seemed to consider, scratching his chest. ‘My sister’s gone. As for her ma—Maggie’s ma, not that she was any kind of mother to her—I don’t know.’

‘Thank you,’ Frances said. She paused. ‘I’m truly sorry about Maggie. I’m sure she’ll soon be back.’

‘I didn’t want her to go but she set her heart on it. I thought as she’d be safe, being with the party from the Hall.’

Frances’s head dropped a little. Laurence said, ‘We’ll do everything we can to find her.’

Even as he said it he thought how meaningless his words were. Walter didn’t bother to respond.

‘She was at me to have a dog,’ he said, still staring at the fire. ‘I told her it’d be too much trouble. Mebbe if she’d had a dog she’d have come back to see him.’

Once they were clear of the house Frances said, a desperate note in her voice, ‘Why didn’t we ever talk to her? She obviously had dreams, however improbable, and she’d tried to make her room nice, kept her things neat and treasured those pitiful few mementoes of her parents.’

‘Not knowing really what became of either of them,’ Laurence reflected, wondering whether Maggie might have gone in search of her mother, although it was unlikely she’d know where to begin to find her.

Frances looked almost on the point of tears.

‘We never really thought of how things were when she wasn’t bringing in tea or polishing the floors. Patrick saw it more because he hasn’t just got used to her being here.’ She seemed bewildered by her own blindness. ‘Her mother had abandoned her, her father had been killed, yet we thought, if we thought at all, that she was lucky to still have a home and to stay in the village.’ Her words came fast. ‘That awful smelly house. And none of us ever saw, or thought whether she wanted any of the things other girls had. She was just a plainish child to us but she was growing up. Perhaps she did have a young man. I rather hope she did.’

Laurence nodded, though it seemed unlikely. Over the last weeks he had come to think their collective sense of loss at Easton Hall had rendered the family insensitive to any other grief. As long as Maggie came back eventually, perhaps her going would have done some good.

They walked on and reached the small village green; its duckpond looked almost idyllically pretty in the sun. Half a dozen ducks were basking on the bank.

‘Shall we sit for a bit?’ Frances said, crossing to the bench under the tree. She settled on it with her legs stuck straight out. He couldn’t help but notice that the wrinkles in her cotton stockings and her dusty lace-up shoes only emphasised rather fine ankles. She exhaled noisily and when she said, ‘What a rotten situation,’ he didn’t ask whether she meant Maggie’s disappearance or the whole shadow of misfortune that seemed to lie over Easton Deadall.

They sat together with their backs to the old tree, gazing at the handful of cottages in front of them. Some were obviously being repaired, their new thatch yellowy gold. It was quiet with the older children not yet back from school in the neighbouring village. They could just hear a woman calling to a child or perhaps even to chickens, but not clearly enough to make out what she was saying. Laurence rested his hand on the arm of the seat, his hand smoothing wood so old that it was more like warm stone. Feeling some ridges, he glanced down to see some old initials and wondered whose long-dead love they spoke of.

Almost as if she sensed his thoughts, Frances said, ‘Easton was so full of life once. I don’t expect you can imagine it. In the early days—before Kitty went—there would be pranks and sudden decisions to go on picnics, or play poker in the drawing room, or have a tennis tournament, or force guests at their house parties to put on these dreadful plays. When Digby was dancing he’d pick Lydia up right off the floor.’ She smiled in recollection. ‘He had a really fine voice, whether singing along with his own playing on the piano, or booming out in church. He played for the village cricket team. The men loved that; he was their best bowler. He should have had a son, really. Kitty was gentle like Lydia and she was frightened of loud noises and the dark.’

She turned to face him as if eager for him to see how it was.

‘But he still used to walk around the estate with her on his shoulders.’ She paused again, looking away. ‘He was never the same after Kitty. He went through the motions but the boyish fun was gone. It became a bit desperate; after all, who would want to make up a jolly house party when the couple had managed to lose their only child?’ Her voice had an edge of hardness to it.

Laurence had noticed how everybody who talked about Kitty had trouble finding the right vocabulary. They would describe her as ‘lost’, ‘gone’, ‘taken’, or ‘disappeared’, or just the phrase he’d heard two or three times, ‘before’ or’ ‘after’ Kitty, her diminutive name expressing the avalanche of fear, uncertainty and misery that had settled on the Hall.

‘It must have been hard for Julian too,’ Laurence said, hoping that in the change of subject she didn’t think he wasn’t taking in her words. ‘To have such an older brother.’

Frances was nodding in agreement before he’d even finished the sentence. ‘On the other hand it’s hard to imagine it the other way round, if Julian had been the heir, solid, decent and second-best at everything. Perhaps he was not a man who could have led the village to war?’

To death, more like, Laurence thought. He had come across men like Digby at Oxford: on the river, at college balls, following a beagle pack. Men so handsome and so physically able that it was hardly surprising they glowed with confidence. He had never felt he knew any of them; did they exist when they weren’t performing? Instead he said mildly, ‘Is Julian better for the estate perhaps?’

Frances smiled, the slightly asymmetrical smile he liked so much. ‘Much better in some ways, with better accounts, perhaps, better plans. Sensible, if not so much fun.’ Then she sighed. ‘If only Julian hadn’t been very much in love with Lydia. Once Digby brought her home, Julian never had eyes for any other woman.’

‘Was there ever any other woman?’

‘Oh yes.’ Frances looked surprised. ‘I mean he’s a nice man, nice looking too. But he fell for Lydia.’

‘Not so sensible, Julian, then?’

‘No. I suppose not.’

It seemed to Laurence that the silence between them stretched on for ever. She was leaning forward, her arms resting on her thighs, he face almost hidden by her fall of hair. He rested his head against the rough bark of the tree. Through the leafy tips of the branches, the sky was a rich shade of blue, and small birds—swallows? swifts?—swooped high above. His eyes closed; it was the sort of peace he had once taken for granted.

‘I don’t mean to be disloyal to Lydia in any way,’ Frances said suddenly, startling him. ‘But you must feel as a relative newcomer, looking in on us all, that we are obsessed with the past?’

He made a noncommittal face, but she was looking at him so intently that he said, ‘All this,’ he indicated the small cottages beyond the green, with their half-repaired roofs, ‘this is looking to the future in a good way, I think. Perhaps bringing William in, who had no connection with Easton Deadall, helped. He could only look forward because he wasn’t familiar with its past.’

He didn’t say that he thought William had a determination to look to the future because for him the past was not, as it was for Lydia, a place of sorrow. Rather it held life and opportunity and certainty that had been removed from him for ever in a single mortar explosion in France.

‘Sometimes,’ Frances said, ‘I feel as if Easton will never recover until we—Lydia, Julian, Patrick and me—are dead, and all our memories with us. Kitty dominates everything we do. A little girl who has been gone for over twice as long as she was with us, whose strange afterlife leaves a sort of smothering blanket of guilt over all of us. Even Patrick, who can’t bear to come here more than once every few years.’

‘Why is everyone so angry about Patrick being absent?’

‘The war,’ she said. ‘He couldn’t fight but he could have run the estate for Digby and then for Lydia. But he wouldn’t. He was only at Oxford while we were struggling and the place slid into rack and ruin.’

It was so unlike her to sound bitter that he wanted to take her hand and tuck her into the warmth and safety of his arms. The moment passed. He asked whether she felt that Maggie was in danger.

‘I did at first, because of Kitty, of course. It seemed like fate repeating itself. But when Julian had spoken to the police I realised how it looked to them. Still...’

‘Still what?’

‘Still, why would she suddenly take off? She seems fond of us, very fond of Nicholas. She never caused any trouble.’

‘As her grandfather said.’

She nodded.

‘Patrick’s right: there wasn’t a lot of fun in her life,’ he said. ‘Though in his own way Walter seemed to care about her. He cares about her now she’s gone, even if he didn’t when she was there.’

‘Did anything strike you when we were in her room?’

He thought for a second. ‘Her belongings were pretty paltry, yet she’d tried. It was a funny mixture of childhood and adult curiosity.’

‘What about her belongings?’ She looked almost eager.

‘Shabby? Sentimental?’

‘Her clothes?’

He shrugged. He’d tried to look away when she was going through the girl’s possessions. ‘There weren’t many.’

‘They were winter clothes: woollens, a coat that I think Lydia had given her. A warm dress, a flannel nightdress, a shawl. She probably has very, very few clothes, but there was no underwear, no dresses. No handkerchief. No hairbrush, for heaven’s sake.’

He thought he could see where she was going with this but was temporarily distracted by four or five children walking into the village: a tall girl in a pinafore holding a little boy by the hand, and three other children with school bags who were shouting and pushing each other. A woman had come out from the nearest cottage and was standing at a gate. The girl stopped to talk to her and the two of them both glanced towards where they were sitting. One of the boys ran at the ducks, causing them to scurry into the water, squawking loudly.

Laurence turned back to her. ‘You think she’s taken some of her things with her, that she’d planned to go?’

‘I think it’s possible. It’s better than the alternatives.’

‘The most likely person she’d try to find would be her mother, don’t you think?’

‘If she knew where she was. But how would she? They wouldn’t even recognise each other now.’

He thought back to Maggie in the kitchen, preparing crockery for the picnic, a picnic she was never going to share. She had unquestionably been excited; like her grandfather, she was a girl of few words but she’d been positively chatty. She had looked pretty with the ribbon in her hair and a print dress, which, while a bit old-fashioned, had made her look smarter. He had put it all down to anticipation of seeing the Wembley exhibition. Even at the time he’d been glad they were taking her, thinking there wasn’t a lot to do around Easton. Now that he’d seen how she lived, her eagerness had an added poignancy. She’d had a bag on a chair next to her as she directed Nicholas. Laurence had nearly teased her about it. It was the sort of bag his grandmother had had: black, capacious and ugly.

‘I think she could have had things with her,’ he said. ‘Her bag was big enough.’

The four smaller children were all standing only yards away now. One of the younger girls tucked her frock into her knickers and did a cartwheel in a flash of blue and white, then stood and regained her balance, adjusting her plaits.

‘I think we’re going to keep our audience as long as we sit here,’ Frances said.

Saying good afternoon as they passed the children, they were about to set off for Easton when Laurence had a thought and turned back to the small group.

‘Are any of you Kilminsters?’ he said.

A smallish, curly-haired boy put his hand up. ‘He’s not a teacher, Johnny,’ the girl with the plaits said. ‘Stupid.’ She looked scathingly at the boy and then at Laurence in a businesslike way. ‘He’s one and that’s his sister.’ She pointed at the tall girl talking to the woman by the cottage. ‘Ethel. Their Sidney’s got a quinsy.’

Frances said, ‘And what about a girl called Ruby?’

One of the boys sniggered and even the girl with plaits looked amused. ‘You won’t get sense out of Ruby.’ She tapped her forehead with a finger. ‘Her ma was frightened by a bull when she was carrying.’

Two taller boys, eleven or twelve perhaps, had come up the lane and joined the group. One had a face covered in freckles and reddish-blond hair. The other was sturdy and reminded Laurence slightly of someone.

‘Are you talking about Mags?’ the freckled boy said eagerly.

‘She’s been taken by white slavers, my auntie says,’ the girl in plaits retorted. ‘It comes of going to London.’

The two smaller boys had stopped scuffling and were listening intently.

‘She’s been kidnapped,’ the same older boy volunteered.