Some Old Lover's Ghost (62 page)

‘My name’s Rebecca Bennett,’ I bawled, assuming, as one patronizingly tends to with the elderly, that he was deaf. ‘I’m writing a biography about Tilda Franklin, and I’d like to speak to you, if I may.’

‘Tilda?’ he said. Pale eyes, the whites yellowed, glared at me.

I took a deep breath. ‘I came to Southam to attend Mr Canavan’s burial, and I’d like to talk to you about him.’

For a moment, Kit de Paveley neither moved nor spoke. But at last he opened the door and said, ‘Then you’d better come in.’

I followed him into the house. The smell made my stomach, still delicate, turn. Must and mould and damp and unwashed clothes. I followed Kit de Paveley along a corridor of greys and browns, of peeling wallpaper and ancient, dingy distemper. Heaps of damp-spotted books stood against the wainscoting, and a stack of broken umbrellas and cracked, mud-encrusted galoshes were abandoned in a corner. It was the sort of house where a lonely old pensioner lies dead for a month before a passer-by catches the scent of death and we all feel a collective shame. Both the house and its owner were decaying.

He led me into a room at the back of the house. More books, and piles of yellowing newspapers and magazines. There was a tray with a milk bottle and a sliced white loaf and a jar of Marmite. He had just had his tea, I supposed.

‘Sit down, Miss Bennett.’

I sat, though I would have preferred not to. It wasn’t a house you wanted to touch: as though sickness and old age and old crimes were themselves contagious.

Kit de Paveley sat opposite me. He wore baggy tweed trousers and a shirt without a tie, and a cardigan of some indeterminate mustardy colour. The frayed collar of the shirt was greyish-white. His face was a similar colour, greyish and translucent, as though letting through the colour of the bones beneath. I wondered whether he was afraid.

He said, ‘Daragh Canavan’s interment … doubtless an edifying event. Were there many mourners?’

I shook my head. ‘Very few.’

He laughed, and then he began to cough, a horrible, racking noise that filled the dark room. My mouth was dry. I said, ‘I thought that you might come, Mr de Paveley.’

‘Now why’ – and he smiled – ‘would I wish to do that?’

‘Guilt, I suppose. You killed Daragh, didn’t you, Mr de Paveley?’

‘Dear me,’ he said. ‘Such an imagination.’ Yet he seemed neither offended nor concerned.

I glanced around the room. Such a lot of books. I said, ‘You’re a historian, aren’t you, Mr de Paveley?’

‘I don’t recall’ – again, that small smile – ‘that being an historian is considered a criminal offence. Even in these uncultured times.’

‘I borrowed a book from the library.’ I delved in my bag and took it out. ‘I expect you’ve read it, Mr de Paveley. In fact, I’m sure you have. There’s probably a copy of it somewhere in this house. After all, you’ve always been interested in the history of the Fens, haven’t you?’ I found my marker, and opened the page. I said, ‘This section discusses the medieval penalty for those who neglected the banks and drains on their land. “Bound hand and foot, the miscreant was staked down in the breach in the bank and there buried alive. In death, he thus became part of the Fens’ sea defences.’” I looked up. ‘That’s what you did to Daragh, wasn’t it, Mr de Paveley? You tied him hand and foot and buried him in the breach of the dike.’

He began to cough again. When the spasm was over, I said, ‘I don’t understand
why
you killed him. I don’t understand why you hated him. As far as I can see, you didn’t have much to do with each other.’

There was a long silence. A fly crawled around the rim of the Marmite jar. I heard Kit de Paveley say softly, ‘The assumptions of the young are always so preposterous. Assuming that I was responsible for Mr Canavan’s death, why on earth, after so many years of silence, should I choose to tell
you
about it?’

‘Not me,’ I said. ‘Tilda.’

The supercilious mask shifted slightly. ‘Tilda?’

‘Tilda’s old and frail, Mr de Paveley. She wants to know the truth before she dies.’

‘She was well rid of him!’ he hissed suddenly. ‘He would have destroyed her!’

He still sends me flowers on my birthday
I thought I understood. ‘You loved her?’

‘Of course I loved her. She was beautiful. And she was kind to me. She was nothing, a housemaid’s bastard daughter, but she was a
lady.’

When he smiled, I saw the similarities between them, Kit de Paveley and Tilda Franklin, and recognition made the breath catch in my throat. Both had the same long, straight nose, high forehead and light grey eyes. In Tilda, beauty was informed even now by energy and compassion, but in Kit de Paveley the same features had been dulled by bitterness and apathy.

‘What is it?’ he said suddenly. ‘Why do you stare at me like that?’

I had not meant to stare. I turned my face away, and wondered whether I should tell him that Tilda Franklin was his cousin, his blood relative. The impulse died, lost as suddenly as it had been born.

He rose, and shooed the fly from the Marmite jar, and screwed on the lid. Then he stood beside me, his shadow over me, and for the first time I felt afraid.

‘For Tilda? Well then, I will tell you. After all, I’ve nothing left to lose.’

In the brief pause that followed, I heard the first raindrops strike the window pane.

‘I killed him because he laughed at me.’

I licked my lips. Suddenly, he reminded me of Charles. ‘About Tilda?’

‘Not at first.’ He remained standing beside me, one mottled purple hand resting on the frayed arm of the sofa, just a few inches away from me. ‘I’d spent the day trying to rediscover the site I’d been working on before the flood. It was evening. I was about to pack up, and go home. It had been hopeless, of course. Layers of silt covering everything, artefacts washed away. Anyway, Daragh Canavan appeared just as I was packing away my things. He was drunk. He was disgusting. Swaggering.’ Kit de Paveley’s voice lowered, and as he leaned towards me, sharing
his secrets, I tried not to shudder. ‘Shall I tell you what he said to me?’

I nodded mutely. He was mad, I thought. Isolation and disappointment and bitterness had turned his mind.

‘He said,
Did the water wash away your mud pies, then
?’

‘So you hit him?’

‘Not yet. He was bigger than me, remember. Stronger. Like an animal. He rutted like an animal – I saw him once, lying in a field with some tart from the village. He thought that I was a weakling. He used to make fun of me in the Home Guard, in front of the other men. And in the flood, he sent me to the church, with the women.’

I had to look away then, unable to bear the intensity of those eyes. The room had darkened as the clouds swelled, and heavy drops of rain battered against the dusty panes, sliding down to the sills.

‘Would you like to know how I killed him, Miss Bennett? So that you can write it in your book?’

Again I nodded, and sighed silently with relief as he moved away and sat down again.

‘He said,
Did the water wash away your mud pies?
but I didn’t rise to it, I just kept on working. He was drinking from a hip flask. He offered me the flask, and I said no, alcohol didn’t agree with me. He said that it agreed with him very well, that it improved his performance. He said he could keep going for hours if he’d had a drink or two, which would make the lady he was going to see very happy.’

He began to cough again. The sound was so dreadful that I thought his frail old lungs would burst. I left the room, and opened one door after another until I found the kitchen. I filled a teacup with water, and brought it back to him.

The redness induced by the coughing fit was succeeded by pallor. He was not only mad, I thought, but close to death. I should have left the house, perhaps, gone to find a doctor, but my curiosity persisted. I said, ‘Did you know that Daragh was going to see Tilda?’

‘He’d been sniffing after her for years. Wouldn’t leave her alone. I asked him. He told me. And that was when’ – Kit de Paveley’s forehead was damp with sweat; he dabbed at it with a handkerchief – ‘that was when he guessed that I loved her. And he laughed at me. So I hit him with the shovel. The first time I hit him, he was stunned, and fell to the ground. And then I hit him again, while he lay there.’

He began to smile. The smile was worse than anything. ‘It was easy,’ he said. ‘He was drunk, and he never thought I’d do it. He thought I was a cissy, a weakling. But I’ve strong arms, Miss Bennett. All that digging.’

‘You hit him with the spade and killed him?’

He stifled a cough. The rain still drummed against the windows. Water oozed through the leaky frames.

‘Not – just – then.’ He sipped the water. ‘I couldn’t think what to do at first. I almost ran to get help, and then I realized that we’d all be better off without him. Tilda – Jossy – me – everyone. He was a harlot and a wastrel. I’d a lantern with me, and I remember looking up and seeing the repair work to the dike. And I thought, how appropriate, how perfect. Of course I’ve read that book. Daragh Canavan hadn’t looked after the land as he should have done. I’d tried to tell him, years before, that the Fens are different. He hadn’t listened, of course. I bound his hands and feet with my bootlaces, while he was still unconscious. They were good leather laces – I bought the boots for a dig in Crete in ‘36 – he’d not have been able to break them. Then I lugged him to the gap in the bank. I wasn’t sure then whether he was dead or not. It’s not as easy to tell as you might think. But when I began to shovel the earth on him, I saw him move. His foot twitched. But I kept on shovelling.’

He went quiet. I felt sick. My fear had gone: he was just a mad, pathetic old man. I wanted to leave this dirty, airless little house, with its old hatreds, old jealousies.

But he was still talking. After so long, he welcomed the release of the confessional, perhaps.

‘I thought they’d find him. All the next day I waited for the
knock on the door. For weeks, months, I thought they’d find him. I’d dream about bones pressing up through the grass. I’d dream about opening a trench, and finding myself looking down at a skull. I couldn’t
dig
any more.’ He laughed. ‘Well, I couldn’t, could I? At night, when I was alone – and I was always alone – I’d imagine a knock at the door, opening it, and seeing him standing there, brushing the earth from his clothes.’

I had to get up and go to the window, though the dust and the rain kept out the light. ‘Did you regret it?’

‘Of course not! Think of the harm that he’d done. Think of poor Jossy.’

‘Jossy
loved
Daragh. And what about Caitlin? Didn’t you realize how much Daragh’s death would hurt her?’

He mumbled something inaudible. The silence was filled only by the fly’s buzzing, the rain’s tattoo.

He said, ‘What will you do now, Miss Bennett? Will you go to the police? They came here, you know. I lied to them – pretended that I knew nothing. What will you do?’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t know.’

‘You shouldn’t count on a dramatic trial. Your name in all the newspapers. I am dying, Miss Bennett, which is why I have told you this. I would not have done so otherwise. I have cancer. The lungs rotting from within. They say that I could have another six months, but I don’t think I will live that long. I don’t intend to see another New Year.’ He looked around the shabby room. ‘I have outlived my time. The world has become unfamiliar to me.’

He stood up. ‘How many mourners attended Daragh Canavan’s burial, Miss Bennett?’

‘Five,’ I said.

‘Do you think I will have as many?’

His words followed me as I walked down the corridor. As I opened the front door, he said, ‘Give my regards to Tilda, Miss Bennett. Remember me to her.’

I left the house, and walked across the field to the dike. The rain soaked through my thin dress and jacket, but I welcomed its falling. It cleansed me. I climbed the bank and stood on the summit
in the wet grass. In the dike the raindrops made concentric circles on the black surface of the water. I looked up to the distant Hall, square against the grey sky, and I knew what I must do. I began to pick the last wild flowers that bloomed on the bank: purple loosestrife, oxeye daisies, tormentil. The bunch of flowers in my hand, I walked back to the village. In the churchyard, I knelt by Jossy Canavan’s grave, and arranged the flowers in the metal container. Though I am not a believer, I said a prayer for Jossy, who had passed her childhood in terror of one man, and had endured through her adult life a tormenting love for another. I prayed that now her lost love lay beside her, she would rest in peace. I stood up, my hands protectively clutched over my flat belly. I knew that I would keep my baby, that there had been too many lost children in this story for me to abandon this one. I glanced for a last time at Tilda’s sister and Tilda’s lover, and then I walked to my car.

C
HAPTER
N
INETEEN

Her ghosts remained with her, kindly companions for the most part. One night, she dreamt, as she had not done in years, of Daragh. They were riding across the Fens, and she was sitting on the horse’s bare back behind him, her arms around his waist. She could feel the wind in her hair, and the warmth of his shoulder against her face.

Waking, she sat up too quickly and pain jabbed at her chest. ‘Max,’ she whispered feebly, and crouched for a moment, waiting for the beast to abandon its sport. When she was able to, she got out of bed and walked slowly to the bathroom. The indignities of old age – stiff limbs, weak bladder, forgetfulness – irked her more than usually. Inside, she was still the young girl galloping across the fields with her lover, yet the light grew dimmer, the body too frail a receptacle. When, washing her hands, she looked into the mirror, she could not remember what she once had been, and why they had once loved her. Daragh’s face, seen in her dream, was fading too, yet the man she had loved, she thought, had died long before that fateful night in 1947, ruined by his own weakness.
You have got what you deserve
, Aunt Sarah’s voice whispered. Daragh’s greed had destroyed him years before
he had walked across the field to Southam, and had encountered Kit de Paveley.