Angel With Two Faces (9 page)

She could bear it no longer. Hardly caring that it was Loveday’s favourite picture of her brother, Morwenna tore the photograph of Harry from the wall and ripped it from its frame. She walked over to where the fire burned low in the grate and placed one corner deep into the coals, watching as the flames made easy work of his smiling face – and wishing that everything else could be wiped out as easily.

The indigo tide stole ever further across the sand like a stain of spreading dye, and campion tinted the cliff-top in every direction. Josephine was glad of the holiday mood which had driven her early from her bed and out along the coastal path for her first glimpse of the sea. She was not an early riser by nature, but one evening at Loe House had shown her that she would be wise to snatch some peace and quiet at the beginning of each day if she was to get any work done at all. The Motleys’ hospitality was infectious, and she was intrigued by the estate traditions which were to be played out over the coming week – above all, she wanted to spend some time with Archie away from the professional demands that dominated their time together in London. If sleep had to be sacrificed, then so be it.

It was a glorious morning, and it seemed to belong entirely to her and to the flock of young herring gulls who swung overhead, testing their broad, muddy-brown wings and repeating a strident, laughing note as if they sensed that their first long winter had finally come to an end. It was the essence of the coast as surely as the pipes were the essence of the Highlands, and it would, she guessed, arouse the same feelings in the heart of someone born to the sea as a few notes of ‘The Flowers of the Forest’ could stir in her. The gulls’ dissonant song followed her along the cliff path, past the church and away from the estate. When she came to a spot which offered a particularly
good view of the long beach stretching back towards the Lizard, Josephine left the path and made her way down a gentle slope of springy turf to the cliff edge, where a group of flat, grey boulders created exactly the working space she was looking for. Apart from a solitary figure heading towards her from the direction of the village, there wasn’t a soul in sight. If she couldn’t find peace and inspiration here, it was time to look for another job altogether.

The figure on the path – a small, dark man with heavy black boots and a paper tucked under his arm – waved jovially as he passed her, and went on his way, whistling tunelessly. Josephine sat down on the smallest of the three rocks and took a notebook and pen from her bag, enjoying the ritual and the sense of possibility that these early stages offered before the inevitable frustrations had a chance to take hold. She looked at her watch and made a start, intrigued to see where the first few words would take her. ‘It was a little after seven on a summer morning,’ she wrote, ‘and…’ She cast round for a name. Archie? No, too obvious, and he’d only be embarrassed. William, then – that would do. ‘… and William Potticary was taking his accustomed way over the short down grass of the cliff-top.’ The words seemed to run into each other on the page, and she reached impatiently into her bag again to look for the reading glasses which she had recently accepted as a necessary evil. They felt strange and uncomfortable, and she hated the way she looked in them, but she had to admit that the wretched things made life easier. ‘Beyond his elbow, two hundred feet below,’ she continued, and glanced up from the paper to consider the image. As she looked at the sea, her attention was caught by a shape on the sand down to her left, where the beach cut between two rocks. Glad of any excuse to
remove her glasses, she peered more closely at the object and saw that it was a young girl in a green dress, lying on her back with her arms stretched out behind her. The tide was on its way in, and an occasional wave came far enough up the beach to wet her feet. Josephine watched for a moment, hoping that the girl would sit up and move out of reach of the water, but she lay there motionless, allowing the sea to wash over her bare legs and threaten the rest of her body, and Josephine knew instantly that she was dead.

Battling with urgency and hopelessness, Josephine flung her notebook down and ran back to the coastal path. The cliff-top church, which offered the closest safe access to the beach, was about a hundred yards away and she reached it in good time, but then had to double back via the sand, which was much harder going. There was no doubt in her mind that the girl was Loveday, and her concerns of the night before came back now to haunt her. Why hadn’t she telephoned Archie before she went to sleep? No young girl should be allowed to wander about near the sea in the middle of the night, let alone one who had so recently suffered a devastating bereavement and who, in Ronnie’s words, ‘wasn’t quite right in the head’. What were they all thinking of? What a terrible way to go – alone in the cold, black water, just like her brother.

She rounded the rock, no longer able to keep up more than a jog, and saw with relief that she was at least in time to stop the body being washed back out to sea. As she approached the girl, she noticed that her hair and upper body were completely dry but, in her panic, the significance of this did not register – until, as she stretched out her hand, Loveday sat up quickly and looked at her.

Josephine screamed and stepped backwards. ‘Jesus Christ –
I thought you were…’ She stopped in mid-sentence, trying to maintain some sort of tact in spite of her shock.

‘No, I’m not dead – I’m just pretending,’ said Loveday, with a matter-of-factness that defied any pretensions to sensitivity. ‘I’m sorry if I frightened you.’

Still breathing hard, Josephine said: ‘Don’t worry about that. I’m glad you’re all right – but why would you want to pretend something like that?’

‘I wanted to know how my brother feels,’ she said earnestly. ‘Everyone keeps saying he’s at peace and nothing can hurt you when you’re dead, and I just wanted to make sure they were telling the truth.’ There was such a powerful combination of logic and impossibility in the reasoning that Josephine did not even begin to argue. ‘It’s a nice idea,’ Loveday continued, standing up and brushing the sand off her skirt. ‘Just being quiet, with no one shouting or crying. I think I’d like that a lot.’

The remark was made without any sense of self-pity, but it told Josephine more about Loveday’s short life than half an hour of conversation could have done. ‘Do people often shout at you?’ she asked.

‘Not
at
me, but they shout at each other all the time, and that’s worse. You’re the lady staying with Mr Motley, aren’t you?’

‘Yes – how did you know?’

‘Because you’ve got a funny accent. My sister said you come from somewhere strange.’

Josephine could not help but laugh at this innocent betrayal of a passing insult. Clearly Morwenna was no more enamoured of her than she was of Morwenna. ‘Your sister’s absolutely right,’ she said. ‘Scotland is a very strange place
indeed.’ She held out her hand and Loveday shook it solemnly. ‘I’m Josephine and you must be Loveday. Shall we go and sit somewhere safe while the tide comes in? I’ve left my things up on the cliff, so I must go and get them.’ Loveday said nothing, but followed her back up the beach. ‘I met your sister last night,’ Josephine said. ‘She was out near the Lodge looking for you. That’s why I was so worried when I saw you this morning. You
have
been home, haven’t you? Morwenna does know you’re all right?’

‘Yes, but she was tired so I didn’t get into too much trouble. Anyway, I only went to the church to see Harry.’ It took Josephine a second or two to realise that Loveday meant Harry’s grave. She remembered what Ronnie had told her about the bluebells, and tried not to show how unsettling she found the girl’s preoccupation with her dead brother. ‘Christopher was in the graveyard, too,’ Loveday added. ‘But he didn’t see me.’

‘Who’s Christopher?’ asked Josephine, who was beginning to think that everybody on the estate must have been roaming around outside last night. Were beds and firesides out of fashion in Cornwall?

‘He’s my friend, but he and Harry don’t get on. They had a fight and Christopher got really angry because Harry told him to leave me alone. I think he must have gone to the grave to say sorry.’

‘Why didn’t Harry like Christopher?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps he thought I’d tell Christopher all our secrets, but I’d never do that.’

‘Did you and Harry have lots of secrets?

Loveday’s face lit up with a smile. ‘Loads. He knows everything. Some of them are better than others, of course, but I’d
never tell anyone, not even Christopher. I promised Harry, and he’d be sad if I broke my promise. What about you? Do you have a secret with someone?’

‘People my age are full of secrets,’ Josephine said, ‘but they’re not as much fun when you’re older. They’re usually things you’d rather forget about, and you certainly wouldn’t want anyone else to know about them. It’s not like when you’re young and you can share something with one special person.’

‘Oh, I’ve got secrets with other people, too,’ Loveday explained proudly. ‘Christopher’s shown me things that I mustn’t tell Harry or Morwenna about, and Morwenna tells me that I mustn’t talk about the family to anyone else. It gets complicated, doesn’t it, trying to remember who knows what? Sometimes it’s easier not to say anything at all, just to be sure you don’t make a mistake.’

Loveday had a knack for expressing the complications of life in very simple terms, Josephine thought, and the sense she spoke was a long way from Ronnie’s assessment of her. It sounded as though she’d had to deal with grown-up pressures from a very young age, but she still articulated them as a child, with a directness which was alien to adult ears; she hadn’t yet learned the tricks of evasion and pretence that most people adopted, but that certainly didn’t make her odd or stupid – and it could prove invaluable if there really was a mystery surrounding Harry’s death. ‘When I was your age, the fun was trying to guess other people’s secrets,’ Josephine said. ‘Do you ever do that? I bet you’re good at finding things out.’

The girl smiled again. ‘Morveth always says I’m clever,’ she said. ‘She says I see more than other people because they’re all too busy to notice. We play a game sometimes – I tell her
things I’ve seen, and if I find them out before she does, she gives me a book.’

How very enterprising of Morveth, Josephine thought, reluctant to call it exploitation when she was doing exactly the same thing herself. A girl with the face of an angel and a reputation for being fanciful would be the perfect informant. ‘And what sort of things have you found out?’ she asked, hoping that Loveday would not swear her to secrecy as well. She wanted to be able to tell Archie anything that the girl told her, but she could not betray her confidence with a clear conscience.

Loveday thought for a moment, and obviously decided to trust her. ‘I know that Mrs Jacks hides money from her husband,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen where she keeps it, buried in the garden, and she only ever goes there when she knows he’s out in the woods somewhere.’ With a bit of luck, the woman would be saving to leave, Josephine thought; perhaps she should ask Loveday to add something to the pot on her behalf. ‘Mr Caplin steals pheasants from the pens and sells them to the gypsies in Helston,’ Loveday continued, ‘and – you won’t say anything about this one, will you?’ Josephine’s heart sank, but she shook her head. ‘Good. Well, Mr Motley isn’t as happy as he pretends to be. He always cries when he comes to the churchyard with the flowers for his wife.’

The last revelation came as no surprise to Josephine: even without Ronnie’s comments in the car, she would have recognised in William that part-absent quality which was obvious in people who carried their grief with them, even in happier times. It had been there in her own father ever since her mother’s death twelve years earlier. Her promise to Loveday was safe, but she still had not touched on anything that could relate to Harry’s death. She decided to try a more direct
approach. ‘When my sisters and I were all living at home, we hated it if one of us had a secret that the others couldn’t guess.’

‘We’re the same,’ Loveday agreed, as Josephine had hoped she would. ‘I used to be so jealous of Harry and Morwenna when I was little. They were always telling me that I was too young to play with them, and it didn’t seem fair that there were two of them and only one of me. I wanted a twin, too. But then they fell out, so Harry tells me his secrets instead. That makes Morwenna really angry.’

She could hardly blame Loveday for the note of satisfaction in her voice: it was difficult to be one of three children, and allegiances could be cruel and short-lived. ‘When did they fall out?’

‘They stopped hanging around together so much before my parents died, but I don’t remember them arguing as much as they have done lately. They’ve been shouting all the time – well, whenever I was in bed and they thought I couldn’t hear them. In the end, Morwenna used to lock herself in her room so that Harry couldn’t get in to talk to her.’

What had happened to sour things between the twins so badly, Josephine wondered? Siblings grew apart all the time, but there was obviously more to this than a straightforward change of heart. Had Morwenna been afraid of Harry for some reason? ‘What were they shouting about?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know – I always put my head under the pillow when it started. People die when they’ve been shouting, and it frightens me.’

‘Loveday, what do you mean?’ Josephine asked gently. ‘Who else has died?’

‘My parents. They shouted a lot before the fire.’

‘At each other?’

‘Yes, and at Morwenna and Harry and me, and even at Morveth when she came round to see us. It was horrible when they died, but at least the shouting stopped for a while. Then it started all over again, and Harry died.’

Loveday was upset now, and Josephine was reluctant to push her any further. ‘Has the shouting stopped again?’ she asked.

‘Yes, most of the time, although Morwenna’s always watching me as if I’m about to do something bad. Sometimes she’s really nice to me and we’re friends, and the next minute she acts as though she hates having to look after me at all.’

Josephine found this easier to understand than the rift between the twins. The plight of the oldest daughter was something that she and Morwenna
did
have in common, and she knew what it felt like to want to be free of someone, no matter how much you loved them. In her case, the responsibility was for her father. They got along well, and these days it suited her to be able to spend long periods of time at home writing, especially as she had the money to make sure that someone else kept an eye on him whenever she was away, but she had always resented the assumption that it would be she who gave up her first career to return to Inverness. Like Morwenna, she had been just a young woman when – still grieving for her mother and with a very bad grace – she had gone back home to Scotland to run the household, so she sympathised with the other woman’s situation: the difference in age between Morwenna and Loveday meant that a central part of the older sister’s life would have to be sacrificed, and those glorious years of freedom between childhood and marriage would never be hers. ‘Sisters are funny creatures,’ she said to Loveday. ‘I bet Morwenna’s as angry with herself as she
is with you, so try not to take it personally and don’t be too hard on her. She’s got a lot to think about.’