Some Deaths Before Dying (5 page)

“It’s all right now, Mrs. Thomas,” Dilys called.

Flora, as usual, was speaking before she was through the door.

“…don’t need to lock me out, Dilys. I always knock, and I don’t mind waiting.”

“Oh, it wasn’t for you, Mrs. Thomas, but Mr. Matson didn’t knock and I didn’t know if he mightn’t come back.”

“Blast him, and I gather he wore Ma out too. You’re sure she’s up to this?”

“Well, we are a teeny bit tired, Mrs. Thomas, but she’s insisting she’s got to talk to you. So I’ll be in my room if you need
me.”

“Thank you, Dilys.”

“That woman’s a jewel,” said Flora as soon as the door closed. “You’re sure you’re not too tired?”

“Yes. Dick gone?”

“Forty minutes ago, in a foul temper. He wouldn’t stay for lunch, which was a relief in the circs. We had a proper up and
downer about Da’s pistols. He said they belonged to him.”

“No.”

“That’s what I kept telling him. He tried to make out that Da was past it when he changed his will, but I wasn’t having any.
He was completely all there, only he had a bit of trouble making himself understood. I was bloody furious with Dick. As far
as I’m concerned, I don’t care if he never sets foot in this house again.”

“Tell you about TV?”

“Yes, and I don’t think he was inventing it, though I wouldn’t put it past him. Isn’t it extraordinary? Did you have any idea
the Laduries were worth that sort of money, Ma? I mean, I knew they were pretty special, belonging to old Murat and so on,
but Da and you used to pop away with them on the terrace as if they’d been toys, of course Da was like that, it never bothered
him what things cost or didn’t. But don’t you think we ought to look into this a bit? I mean, if some total stranger has somehow
got hold of one of them. Dick says you told him they were in the bank, but I’ve just checked the list and they aren’t. When
did you last see them, Ma? I’ve been trying to think. I remember Da showing Jack how to use them—that’d have been when we
were engaged—and then I remember after his first stroke thinking it might do him good to play with them, but they weren’t
on the table by his desk, where they used to be…Didn’t you tell me you’d put them away?”

“Did I?”

“Or was that after he’d died?”

Rachel didn’t respond, relying on Flora to rattle off in some other direction.

“And another thing—according to Dick the fellow on the box said the pistol he was looking at hadn’t been cleaned right, and
Da always made such a fuss about that. I must say it’s all very baffling. I wonder if I couldn’t get hold of a tape of the
programme, I’ll ask Biddy Paxton, her brother’s something fruity in the BBC…All right, Ma, you’re worn out and you need a
rest. I’ll push off. I just wanted you to know I’m not going to stand any nonsense from Dick, and I won’t do anything without
your say-so. There was just something you wanted me for, wasn’t there?”

Rachel managed to smile. Her chief worry had been that Flora might try to appease Dick by conceding some kind of right over
the pistols to him, but that obviously wasn’t now in question. She should have known Flora would do the right thing. She almost
always did, though because of her manner those who didn’t know her very well tended to take her minor acts of virtue for a
lifelong series of flukes. This was what made the coming deception oddly painful.

“Tape,” Rachel whispered, as if that had been what was on her mind. “Good idea. But don’t tell Biddy it’s about pistol. Or
anyone. Only Jack. Private. Family.”

“Yes, of course, Ma. I know they were pretty special to you both, weren’t they?”

“Thank you. No, wait…Just this. I want you to know you’re very good to me, darling. Much, much better than I deserve.”

“Nonsense, Ma, you’re just tired. I’ll send Dilys along, and then you must have a good rest after your lunch. It’s
truite au beurre noir
for supper, and you’ll want to enjoy that.”

R
achel’s midday meal was usually little more than a snack, and then Dilys would put some familiar novel onto the machine and
she would lie for an hour or two and half listen to it and nap off for a while into dream and wake and half listen again.
Henry James was particularly good to doze to, but Jane Austen too insistently soporific.

Today she was too tired to swallow more than a couple of mouthfuls, and then asked Dilys to close the curtains and leave her
in silence, so that she could attempt real sleep.

She succeeded, but woke weeping, ravaged with sexual expectation suddenly cut short. The setting was already vague. A boat,
rocking on warm waves. Nighttime. The tock of the lanyards against the mast. The man not Jocelyn, not even some particular
stranger, just depersonalised man, hands, mouth, weight, member. But herself, her own body, real and solid, not young, no
identifiable age, but with senses vivid and focused…

Her pad was sopping, of course. Her sheets might need changing.

Why now? It was the first time since—oh, long before she’d been nailed to this bed.

Within a few seconds the physical sensation, so intense in the dream, was mere memory, memory that thinned and became disgusting
and absurd as it encountered the reality of her body. But she continued to weep, not now for the lost dream, but the lost
years, the years after Jocelyn had come home.

They had both been virgins on their wedding night, but Jocelyn, unlike many of his apparent type, had not been straitjacketed
by his culture and upbringing; she in fact had started off the more squeamish and apprehensive, thanks to her mother’s embarrassed
explications. But they had given each other confidence to explore the possibilities, discover what pleased them and then make
the most of it.

This hadn’t, in those days, been the kind of thing one talked about to even one’s closest friends, but one evening, about
two years married, they’d been dining with the Staddings, and she and Leila had left Jocelyn and Fish to their cigars to sit
out on the verandah with the punkah swaying softly overhead, its slow draft heavy with the scent of a nearby lemon tree. Beneath
the silk of her dress and petticoat her skin felt like sentient velvet. It was that kind of night, but she was in no hurry
to get home. The small hours were often the best.

Now Leila decided that she wanted a chartreuse to bring her evening to full perfection, and demanded that Rachel should keep
her company. Rachel had already been drinking with care, knowing her own needs and balances. When she refused Leila tried
to insist.

“Honestly, no thanks, I’ve had enough.”

“But you’re pretty well stone cold sober. What’s the matter with you?”

“If you must know, I’m feeling just right for when I get home with Jocelyn. If I drink any more, it’ll take the edge off it.”

“Oh,” said Leila as if this had been something she couldn’t have imagined. And then, after a pause, “Tell me more, Ray. I’m
not being nosy. Please. It sounds as if we’ve been missing something.”

It had been Rachel’s turn to be surprised, though she was long used to the contrast between Leila’s exotic looks and her straightforward
inner self. But Fish? Rachel knew him far less well, but looks, style and everything else about him made it impossible for
her to believe that he had not come to the bridal bed already an experienced lover.

“Please, Ray,” Leila had said again, so Rachel had done her best to communicate the nature of her pleasure and the means of
it, and Leila had thanked her, telling her later that some of what she’d said had been very useful. Strange, at the time,
and in hindsight differently strange.

For the rest of their time in India her pleasure and Jocelyn’s in each other had been barely interrupted by the birth of children
and by the jerky slither of the nations into war, continuing through the scramble of departure, and his brief leaves from
various camps and barracks right up until his eventual sailing for what had seemed the comparative safety of Singapore.

In the years of his absence Rachel had woken night after night aching with longing for him. Occasionally she had felt physically
attracted by other men but had not for an instant thought, or even fantasised, about carrying it any further. She was wholly
Jocelyn’s. She felt that for her any other man would have been, literally, impossible.

Then he had returned, and she had once again slept curled in his arms, though it had been months before he had been well enough
for anything beyond caresses. At this point, slowly, she had started to realise that she had not got all of him back. He could,
and did, satisfy her physical need. He would initiate the performance and carry it through. But it was a performance. Not
that he actively disliked what he was doing. He made the sounds and motions of enjoyment. But after a while she had to accept
that what they had had before the war, what they had been so completely and passionately to each other, was now gone.

She had tried to tell herself that it was only natural, that they were older now, and such passion is the province of the
young. Her own body gave her the lie. The loss was hers, but it was in him and it had nothing to do with age. It was the result
of what had been done to him on the Cambi Road. For his sake, then, she learnt to suppress and control the need, telling herself
that if this was the price she must pay for having him home she would pay it ungrudgingly, heavy though it was, because it
was worth it, worth it a hundred times over.

She succeeded too. The ache came less often and when it did she was able to order it back to its lair. Sometimes they still
made love, gently, without any fuss, like going for a walk together on a fine autumn morning. Thus all was fundamentally well
and she loved him as deeply and strongly as ever, and was confident he did her. She had never in these years wept for her
loss.

She did now, acid little droplets that were all the withered ducts could wring out beneath the wincing eyelids. They had not
ceased when Dilys crept in to see if she’d woken.

“Awake at last? My, we’ve slept, haven’t we? Why, what’s up dearie? We’ve been crying.”

“Nothing. Stupid dream. Pad needs changing. Sorry.”

“Bound to after this time. Never mind, I’ll have you comfortable in a couple of minutes. Let’s just dry our poor face off
first. Tsk, tsk, naughty girl, getting herself into such a state. Nice happy patients, that’s what I like. There. That’s better.
Now let’s see to you.”

With her usual sturdy deftness she did what was necessary, chatting away as she worked, a kind of professional tact on her
part, a way of making it seem that this was a pleasant social occasion, and the indignities to which she was subjecting her
patient were subsidiary and irrelevant.

“Did I say, I got a letter from my niece yesterday? She’s the one who married a Yank, took her out to live somewhere in the
middle where there isn’t much of anything except more of the same, and after a bit she couldn’t stand it any longer so she
walked out on him, which wasn’t very nice of her, I’m afraid, but she always was headstrong. And then she went to live up
in the top left corner—you can see the Pacific Ocean from her bathroom, she says—that’s when you can see anything because
mostly it rains and rains like Scotland, she says, but without the bagpipes, though there’s a lot of wet sheep. Well I sent
her a snap I’d taken of this house in the snow—just after I came, it was, if you remember, we had that snow—so she could see
where I was living. But she didn’t answer and she didn’t answer and then, like I say, yesterday, I got this letter, fourteen
whole pages on a typewriter, which is why I’ve only just finished reading it. I’m going to have to read it again, mind you,
because it’s a muddle to sort out what she’s saying. She’s always flying off at an angle and going on to something else, and
then, no warning, you’re back where you were before only you’ve forgotten where that was. Anyway, like I was telling you,
I’d sent her this snap of the house and now she’s wanting to know all about it and how old it is, and everything. Victorian,
I was going to tell her, and didn’t Mrs. Thomas say it was Colonel Matson’s grandfather that built it, him having done well
out of his cotton mills, and with all these children to house, like families used to be those days—getting on a dozen, wasn’t
it? Poor women, you can’t help thinking. I remember my mum telling me about some old aunt of hers who was a farmer’s wife,
and her saying how she always loved the springtime, when the evenings were longer and the fields greener and there was milk
in the cows and the baby was born. Almost done, dearie. There now, that’s better, isn’t it?”

“Thank you. Albums.”

“Out in the passage? Right you are. Which one? Look in the card index, shall I?”

“No. Different from others. Top left. Blue ring binder. Show me. Something I want to see.”

“Righty-oh, I’ll just get rid of this wet stuff and put a kettle on for our cup of tea, and then we’ll settle down and have
a good look.”

The folder was one Anne had put together for a Social History project. She was in the Sixth at the time, so it would have
been 1952—a good year, Flora in her first job, in a tiny flat just behind Harrods; Anne in her last school year, intelligent,
pretty, already a little tending to detach herself from the family, but not yet into the desperate withdrawal that came later;
Dick at Eton, and according to his tutor showing signs of pulling himself together.

“Would you like me to take a few photographs?” Rachel had suggested.

“That would be super, Ma. Only if you want to, you know? You don’t have to go to town.”

“Nonsense. It’ll give me a chance to play with the half-plate.”

Not the least of Dilys’s virtues was her enjoyment of looking at photograph albums. She slid the reading desk across the bed,
laid the folder in place and opened it at the beginning.

“My, what a big picture! And doesn’t it look handsome like that.”

Yes, the clear summer light and the motionless subject had suited the half-plate very well. There, on the first spread, opposite
a page of Anne’s neat italic handwriting (still then showing the self-consciousness of a newly acquired skill) was the view
of Forde Place from the main gate, with the monkey puzzle to the right and the stable block to the left. Almost nothing had
changed since the afternoon when Rachel had first seen it.