Some Old Lover's Ghost (33 page)

She looked across at me. Her eyes were bright – with anger or with sorrow, I could not tell. I thought of Tilda’s other two adopted children.

‘And Rosi? She lost all her family, didn’t she? What about Hanna?’

‘None of Hanna’s family survived. She had four sisters – they all died in Dachau. Rosi accepted her loss, but Hanna could not. Max found out for her what information he could through the Red Cross, but Hanna went back to Germany when she was eighteen, to look for herself.’

I drank my coffee, wrote my notes, and was aware, as I had been when I had spoken to Rosi Liebermann at Tilda’s party, of the slightness, the triviality of my own experience.

‘Of all my children, Josh was happiest in Southam.’ Tilda smiled. ‘He loved it. The rivers … the open spaces. He was always in trouble, though – he’d leave school at midday, pretend he was going home for lunch, and just roam about. Once he thumbed a lift to Denver Sluice. He didn’t come home until late at night, and by that time Max had called the police. Max was furious, and took him out of the village school and insisted
he weekly board. Max thought he was running wild, you see. I knew that he was just Josh.’

The famous Josh Franklin was, as far as I knew, still roaming about. There had been a postcard on Patrick’s mantelpiece from some remote part of China.

Tilda had fallen silent. I wondered, looking at her, what it had been like to go back to Southam after all those years. I said tentatively, ‘Did the children know about your connection with the de Paveleys?’

She shook her head. ‘I never spoke about it to them. Max thought that I should, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. I saw later that I should have done. Secrets are so destructive. At the time, I felt that I was protecting my children from an unpleasant truth. I remembered how it had hurt me when Sarah had told me about my father, and I didn’t want to inflict that pain on them. Though it was …
unsettling
when Melissa and Caitlin struck up a friendship.’

She looked away from me. I sensed many things unsaid, and I thought both of the German paratrooper she had shot, and the body unearthed from the dike. I said, ‘And Daragh? Did you see much of him?’

Tilda’s profile was set against the background of blue sky like a cameo.

‘Not at first,’ she said slowly. ‘But then … when Josh went missing, Daragh organized the men to search for him. And when Melissa broke her collarbone, he drove us to the hospital. It was always Daragh who would bring Caitlin to our house to play with Melissa. Never Jossy.’

I imagined Daragh, that practised seducer, that consummate opportunist, watching, waiting. How he must have wanted Tilda, who had been beautiful, and who should, but for Sarah Greenlees’ interference, have been his.

‘Daragh kept away, of course, when Max was at home,’ Tilda added.

‘Was Max away a lot?’

‘He stayed in London part of the week, and the rest of the
time he worked at home. Freddie, his editor, wanted him to go back to Germany, but Max refused. The war changed him, Rebecca – he couldn’t settle. He became more and more restless. He was deeply unhappy, in fact. And as always he tried to keep his unhappiness to himself. He shut himself off from me …’

Harold Sykes persuaded Max to accompany him to the pub to celebrate Lorna Clarke’s engagement. ‘Chap’s been sniffing after her for years,’ confided Harold, over Scotches. ‘Never thought he’d come up to scratch.’

The pub was crowded, men jostling for space at the bar. They pulled chairs round a small table: Harold and Max and Lorna and two new boys, Reggie Gates and Basil Dayton. Basil, who had drunk too much, was talking loudly, gesturing with his cigarette. ‘So old-fashioned. Dismal little photographs, long-winded articles for ever harping on about the war. People don’t want to read about the war any more, do they?’

Max knocked back his whisky rather quickly. Harold said amiably, ‘Rather a big thing to ignore, old boy.’

‘People are looking to the future, and so should we.’

‘You mean,’ said Lorna, ‘draw a line under it, forget it?’

Basil Dayton was fair-haired, pink-cheeked, and he looked, Max thought, as though he should still be in sixth form.

‘People don’t want to plough through endless depressing paragraphs about ancient old Nazis in prison in Germany. They want something short – snappy – bright.’

Max drawled, ‘An interesting journalistic challenge. Write a cheerful piece on the Nuremberg trials, using words of no more than two syllables.’

Lorna sniggered. Basil flushed. ‘I just meant that we should look ahead … be less hidebound …’

Reggie Gates lit himself a cigarette, and glanced across the table at Max. ‘After all,’ he said, inhaling, ‘does anyone
read
those impenetrable essays you write, Max?’

Scenting danger, Harold offered to buy another round of drinks. Max, who had months ago classed Reggie as bright but obnoxious, said lazily, ‘One or two plough through them to the end, I suppose.’

‘I mean,’ and a smoke ring circled to the ceiling of the pub, ‘what was your last sermon about? Something to do with the Jews and Palestine? People would rather read about football, or some nice scandalous film star. They’re not interested in
Palestine
– most of them don’t even know where the place is. As long as there’s some cheap little kike to make their suits—’

Max’s fist struck Reggie Gates’s chin. Reggie’s chair fell back and there was the sound of breaking glass. Harold said, ‘Max, for God’s sake—’ and Lorna’s hand gripped Max’s sleeve, halting him. Reggie climbed unsteadily to his feet. ‘You shit, Franklin,’ he said, as he dabbed at his bloody nose with his handkerchief. Max left the pub.

Harold caught up with him when he was halfway down Fleet Street. Rather portly, Harold struggled for breath. ‘Max – what the hell—’

Max shrugged and kept on walking.

‘Slow down, damn you. And what in God’s name did you do that for? Reggie Gates is a ghastly little twerp, but for heaven’s sake, Max, you have to work with him—’

Max stopped at last, his hands dug into his pockets. It was bitterly cold, and he noticed for the first time the flakes of snow that spun in the air. ‘No, I don’t, Harold. I’m giving in my notice.’

Harold gaped, open-mouthed. ‘Don’t be an idiot, Max.’

Max shook his head. ‘It’ll be the most sensible move I’ve made in months. I’ve had enough, Harold. I’m chucking it in.’ Because Harold was an old friend, he tried to explain. ‘Harold, it has all seemed so utterly futile since I came back from Germany. And I feel so
old
. Those kids – Basil and Reggie and their like – they are the future. Smart, brash little grammar-school boys. They can’t spell, and they can hardly construct a sentence, but who cares about that nowadays? You and I are leftovers, Harold.
Our clothes – our manners – our backgrounds – we don’t fit in any more. Things have moved on, and I don’t care to run along, trying to keep up.’

He walked away then, and Harold made no move to follow him. The snow thickened as Max left Fleet Street, and when he looked up he saw the flakes darting against the topaz light of the streetlamps, a frantic, jiggling polka-dot pattern. Max thought how loathsome England had become: a shabby, worn-out little country, the streets still cratered by bomb damage, the population shambling and grumbling, lacking imagination, drained of energy. He no longer felt part of it. None of the post-war visions – neither the idealistic socialism of Attlee’s government, nor the material goods that the people longed for – were his. He could only stand aside and watch it all with a distaste that was both futile and impotent.

Nana had died early in the war, and Cook had left service to earn better wages in a munitions factory. A woman from the village came up several times a week to scrub floors and do the washing, but that was all. The Hall, with its large, numerous rooms and formal gardens, had consequently lost much of its former austere grandeur. Jossy, who rarely noticed her surroundings, didn’t mind. She tended the kitchen garden so that they had fresh fruit and vegetables and, with the aid of Mrs Beeton, taught herself to cook. Because Daragh liked to fish and shoot wildfowl, and because he had many useful contacts in the seedier London pubs and clubs (Jossy tried to avoid thinking of it as the Black Market), their rations were not too restricted.

The Hall, like everywhere else, had the dreary, slightly disreputable look of a building that has not seen a lick of paint in seven years. But it was still the Hall, Jossy’s childhood home, the home of her ancestors for centuries. That her hands were blistered with digging, or that she, queueing for meat at the butcher’s in Ely, was indistinguishable from all the other tired women, did not trouble her, because she knew that her breeding was in her speech, her blood, her name, her ancestry.

She minded only one of the changes that the war years had
brought. Since Tilda Franklin had come back to Southam, Jossy had watched Daragh constantly.
Tilda is ten times more beautiful than you
, Daragh had said, long ago, and Jossy, seeing Tilda, had acknowledged that he had spoken the truth. When he had first told her of Tilda’s existence, Jossy had made discreet inquiries. Cook, who had worked at the Hall only since the mid-Twenties, had been unable to help, but Nana, her memory carefully prompted, had recalled Deborah Greenlees. Nana’s version of Deborah Greenlees’ disgrace had been different from Daragh’s. Nana, like everyone else in Southam at the time, had believed Deborah Greenlees to be flighty, promiscuous, the author of her own troubles.

It was only later, thinking of her father, that Jossy began to doubt the truth of Nana’s version. Jossy remembered her father’s uneven step on the stairs, and how the sound had always produced in her an instant and inescapable fear. A child, she had seen herself through her father’s contemptuous eyes: plain, stupid, worthless. Her childhood had been governed by her fear of him; though he had rarely struck her, she had always sensed his capacity for violence. Her fear of him was still too vivid to be dismissed. Though she tried to reassure herself of her father’s innocence, she was haunted by doubt.

During the latter years of the war, she had realized that Daragh had begun to see other women again. An obliging widow from the village; a shop assistant in Ely. No-one who threatened her. Though his affairs hurt her, Jossy hid her pain. Though she loved Daragh with an undiminished passion, she knew him to be weak. Daragh’s good looks had not lessened in the fourteen years of their marriage, but the quality of Jossy’s love for him had altered. Not the quantity of it: that was unchanged. But she understood him now, and his capriciousness enchanted her as much as it tormented her. She knew herself to be a plodding, mundane person, her nature so different and so inferior to Daragh’s mercurial brightness. She knew that Tilda, and only Tilda, was a threat to her.

At first Jossy had tried to ignore Tilda Franklin’s existence. But weeks and months had passed and Caitlin, riding through the village one day, had struck up a friendship with Melissa
Franklin. Because Melissa was, superficially at least, the only other girl in Southam sufficiently well-bred to be a companion for Caitlin, and because Jossy had kept secret from everyone Tilda’s supposed relationship to her own family, she had been able to make no real objection to the friendship. And besides, Caitlin was useful. Caitlin could keep an eye on Daragh.

Today, Caitlin had spent the afternoon with Melissa, and Daragh had collected her from Long Cottage and brought her back to the Hall in time for tea. After tea, Jossy went upstairs with Caitlin to help her comb out her plaits before her bath. Caitlin, who loathed having her hair done, liked to sit at her mother’s dressing table, distracting herself with the scrapings of cosmetics left in the gilt glass pots.

Jossy unknotted Caitlin’s ribbon. ‘Was he talking to her?’

Caitlin dabbed her nose with the swansdown powder puff. ‘Only a bit. I said I was hungry.’

‘What were they talking about?’

Caitlin shrugged. ‘This and that.’

‘Kate.’

‘The weather. Some boring thing in the newspaper. That exam Melissa’s taking.’

Jossy was relieved. She began to draw the hairbrush through Caitlin’s thick, dark curls. Caitlin painted her lips. She said, ‘And then that woman thanked him and said that she thought he was a marvel.’

Jossy stiffened. ‘Ow,’ said Caitlin. ‘You’re pulling my hair, Mummy.’

‘That woman said that Daddy was a marvel?’

‘Miss Greenlees’ barn door won’t shut properly and all the sacks of potatoes were getting wet, so Daddy carried them into the scullery.’

‘Surely,’ said Jossy coldly, ‘Mr Franklin could have done that?’

‘He’s away.’ Caitlin squinted. ‘He’s always away.’

Jossy’s eyes narrowed, and her hand gripped the hairbrush hard. ‘Away? What do you mean, Caitlin?’

‘He’s in London. Melissa’s really fed up about it.’ Caitlin, dabbing at her eyelashes, sounded bored. But Jossy, all her anxieties suddenly doubled, stared at her daughter’s reflection in the mirror.

Caitlin’s dark eyes emerged from a white skin, and her lips were carefully drawn in scarlet. She is only thirteen years old, thought Jossy with a pang, and she is already beautiful.

After they had dined, they sat in the kitchen, the wireless tuned to a Bach recital. Max closed his eyes, but Tilda knew that he was not sleeping. Eventually she said hesitantly, ‘Max. Do you think that we might have another baby?’

His eyes opened. ‘Tilda—’

‘You said, after the war …’

‘We have five children. Isn’t that enough?’

‘Babies are’ – and she struggled to put her feelings into words – ‘babies make everything all right. A new baby would be a new start. We need a new start.’

He stared at her. ‘We have Hanna, who weeps every night for her family. We have Rosi, who is in love with that frightful curate. We have Josh, who is quite impossible, and Erich who cannot cope in normal society—’

She knew all these things. ‘A baby might distract Hanna from her grief and Rosi from the curate. And Erich is so good with kittens and day-old chicks and things like that, that I thought he might be able to love a baby.’