Authors: Tim Vicary
‘Oh really? That's a surprise. She's usually here at midday.’ Jonathan handed his top hat and gloves to his butler and began to shrug his way out of his coat. Reeves hung up the hat, dropped the gloves on the hall stand, and then moved behind Jonathan to help him off with his coat. There was something in the man's manner, Jonathan thought, which was slightly odd.
‘Anything up, Reeves?’
Jonathan hoped not. It was a fine, breezy spring morning. His business in Sussex had gone well, and he had returned on the train to London in cheerful, expansive mood. He had thought quite a lot about his sister-in-law on the way, and realised he had been a bit precipitate that first night when she had arrived. After all she leads a sheltered life over in Ulster with that dreadful prig Charles. Of course she is fond of me but it will take time to make any progress.
He had hoped to find her here waiting for him in Belgrave Square. They could have had lunch together and gone out for a walk in the park, and he would have been charming and urbane and impressed her with his knowledge of the world. Then, perhaps a few days later . . .
He glanced at Reeves again. The man had not answered and there was definitely something odd, uneasy, in the expression on his face.
‘Come on, man. Out with it! What's up!’
‘It is . . . a little hard to say, sir. Perhaps . . . it would help if you came into the library.’
‘The library? Why — is there a visitor?’
‘No, sir.’ Reeves opened the double doors of the hall, and stood back. ‘On your desk, sir.’
Jonathan walked to the writing desk. It was a piece of furniture he was exquisitely proud of. It had been given to him in part settlement of a fee in his first really prestigious case. There was a letter lying on it. He reached out a hand to pick it up and then stopped, stunned.
‘My God! What the devil is this?’
‘I think perhaps the letter will explain, sir. It is from Mrs Cavendish.’
‘Yes, but my God! The desk — it's slashed to ribbons!’
‘Indeed, sir.’
Jonathan stretched out his hand across the ragged edges of ripped leather and picked up the envelope. The paper knife was there on the desk beside it. He slit the envelope.
Jonathan,
I will not write 'dear' because you are not that any longer. You will see from your desk that I have become a vandal, like Sarah. I believe it is from the same cause. What that may be is for your conscience to discover. I hope one day you repent of your perversion and become the brother-in-law I once knew. Until then, the damage I have done to your desk is as nothing to what you deserve.
Don't expect to find me here because I cannot bear to spend another night under your roof. I am going back to Glenfee.
Deborah.
Underneath was another sentence in a slightly different shade of ink, as though it might have been written later.
PS. It may be that you think you deserve a fuller explanation of this. If you think you do, meet me at the Anglesey Hotel, near Waterloo Station, between four and five.
He read the letter twice, astonished. Then he realised that Reeves was still standing deferentially, watching him. He had a sudden overwhelming desire to be alone.
‘Yes, I see. That will be all, Reeves. You may go.’
‘Sir.’ The man inclined his head and left, his polished shoes clicking quietly across the floor. When he had gone, Jonathan stood for a moment in a daze, the letter crumpled in his hand. Then he sank abruptly into the chair in front of the desk and fingered the torn leather.
My God, he thought. Debbie did this! What the devil has she found out?
I hope one day you may repent of your perversion.
I go away for two nights and my wife's sister believes I have become a monster. Has all the world gone mad?
Sarah had not slept after all, that afternoon. Deborah felt guilty about it. Sarah looked far paler and weaker and thinner than she had expected. Twice she had insisted on leaving the room but each time Sarah had called her back, like a fractious child.
‘I've been alone in a cell so long,’ she said. ‘You can't understand what a joy it is to have company. Don't go, please.’
So Deborah stayed and they talked. First, about life in prison, and how she had escaped. Then, innocuously, about Charles in Ireland. Sarah had not heard about the gun-running. She was intrigued, but not afraid, at all. She agreed with Deborah that, even if there was a conflict, women and children would be safe, and the fact of the troubles would mean that Ulster police would be too busy to search for missing suffragettes. But Deborah wondered if Sarah was strong enough to travel.
Sarah laughed. A rather strained, hoarse laugh from her scarred throat, but a laugh for all that.
‘Don't worry — I may look thin but I'm not dead yet. This is the essential me you see before you, Debbie, bereft of all unnecessary fat. I think it's a wonderful idea going to Glenfee.’
‘At least you will be safe from the London police.’
‘Yes. I may have been a martyr for a week, but I have no desire at all to go back to prison. The further we can get from Holloway the better.’
For a while they talked about Tom. Deborah was determined to keep all news of her own problems from Sarah until she was stronger. Or at least until they were on the train.
Then, inevitably, they talked about Jonathan. Quietly, bitterly, Sarah told her sister the story of what she had discovered that day before she slashed the picture. And the role Martin Armstrong had played. It was as Deborah had suspected. Anxiously, she asked: ‘Was I right to invite Jonathan here? If you don't want to see him, I can go downstairs and see him myself, or ask Mrs Stewart to send him away. He doesn't even know you're here, and he'll never suspect it.’
Sarah thought for a minute. She stared quietly out of the window into the sunlight over the mews, the bones over her sunken face clear and proud as those of a Spanish aristocrat. Then she said, very quietly: ‘No. Send him up. I want to see him.’
‘I shall be with you all the time. You mustn't let him tire you too much.’
A faint, bitter smile flickered on Sarah's face. ‘It will be exhausting, of course. But it has to be done. You were right to arrange it. What time will he be here?’
‘Between four and five, I said.’
‘Then I must be up and dressed by then. I don't want to meet him like an invalid.’
‘You should rest before then.’
‘I'll try, if you stay beside me. You don't have to talk. Just be here.’
And so Deborah drew the curtains and sat quietly in an armchair by the fire, her hands clasped softly on her stomach, thinking, while Sarah lay in her bed and dozed. Both of them, from time to time, glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece and watched the way its hands gradually swept on towards four . . .
‘Your visitor, Mrs Cavendish. In here, sir, if you please.’
‘Hello, Debbie.’
‘Jonathan. So you came?’
‘As you see.’
Mrs Stewart closed the door softly behind him. Jonathan stood in the pleasant sitting room, taking in the flowery, overstuffed armchairs, the light cheerful wallpaper, the pictures of country scenes on the walls. The rigid, unsmiling pose of his sister-in-law standing in front of him.
‘May I sit down?’ Jonathan had left his hat and coat downstairs. He felt awkward, standing like this in a modest hotel room. It reminded him a little of the rooms above Martin Armstrong's consulting rooms.
Don't think of that now.
‘I think I would rather say what I have to say to you standing, Jonathan.'
She knows then, he thought. How on earth did she find out? He held out his hands, took a pace towards her.
‘Debbie, what is all this? Why on earth are you here?’
‘Partly, Jonathan, because I couldn't bear to stay in your house any longer. Oh Johnny, do I have to spell it out to you? Not only have you betrayed your own wife and lied to me — you put her life at risk by what you did!’
‘Her life? Sarah's you mean? What in the world are you talking about, Debbie? I tried to help her — you know I did!’
‘By sending in Martin Armstrong?’
‘Yes. Of course. You know that — you were there.’
Deborah stared at him. Her own husband, she thought. Sarah could have been
killed
if Ruth had not rescued her. Does he really not know?
‘Listen, Johnny. We know all about the . . . the women you went to see above Martin Armstrong's flat. We know about the little girls he takes there and the money men pay to seduce them. And about the house in Hackney —
and you know all this too!
So how could you possibly take me to see such a man and then pretend he had persuaded her to eat? Johnny, he nearly killed her!’
Silence. Jonathan stood very still, trying to take in what she had said. She looked so flushed, furious with herself because of the tears that were coming to her eyes because of the trauma of this moment. All the way here he had told himself that her letter meant she must have found out about his whoring. Though he could not understand how. But this was worse than that, much worse.
‘Debbie, I don't understand you. Truly.’
‘Then if you don't understand
her
, ask
me
.'
He hadn’t noticed the door into the bedroom which had been left ajar. Now he turned and saw . . .
A ghost.
‘Sarah!’ But it was not Sarah. This woman was too thin, too pale and anyway this is the wrong place entirely
she must be really dead as Debbie says . . .
‘Everything she says is true, Jonathan. Every word.’
‘But . . .’ He recovered, took a step towards her. ‘My dear, is it really you?’
‘Don't touch me, Jonathan!’
Well, that at least rang true.
‘Why did you send that man to torture me? Debbie is right — I might have
died
. Do you hate me so much?’
‘I don't . . . Sarah, why are you here? Have you been released, is that it?’
On the proud, beautiful face a wintry smile. No love though. ‘I escaped. Don't ask me how.’
‘I don't care how! My dear, you look ill. Won't you sit down? I can't bear to see you like this.’
Sarah paused, then sat. It was true, her legs were shaking. But maybe that was with anger. Very quietly, her throat hurting slightly with the words, she said: ‘Jonathan, I went out to slash that picture as a political protest against the government's treatment of Mrs Pankhurst, but also because I had discovered what you were doing when you were visiting Martin Armstrong. You didn't really get treatment for a stomach complaint, did you? You were visiting prostitutes. Don't pretend – I know quite well it's true. You must imagine how much that hurt me. It would hurt any woman but especially me. Jonathan, you
know
how my father died. When I married you I believed that I had found an honourable man who would never, ever do such a thing, and yet . . .’
‘Sarah, I did not . . .’
‘You ran the risk of infecting me, Jonathan! Just as any man does who goes to such dreadful places. And worse than that, I discovered in prison that that man Armstrong whom you claim as a friend is actually a whoremaster who purveys young girls as merchandise for the sexual attentions of men such as my husband . . .’
For a moment her voice failed her. The tears got in the way.
‘Sarah, I promise you this is not true . . .’
‘Don't lie, Jonathan! You know it is. And not only that – you sent this man, this monster, to my cell to . . . to torture me. That's all it can be called. Stuff a yard of tube down my throat and pour cold soup down it until I vomit all over him. That's what he did and
you
sent him!’
‘The devil he did!’
Jonathan swung round, glared for a moment at Deborah, stunned . . . She saw eyes wide with shock, fists clenched in rage. Then he knelt down in front of Sarah, took her hands in his.
‘Let go of me!’
‘Johnny, don't!’ Debbie hovered over him, pushing him back. He turned, got up.
‘I don't want to hurt you – my God! Sarah, are you telling me that man forcibly fed you?’
‘Yes, Jonathan. That's exactly what I'm saying.’
‘Then he lied to me! The utter, filthy slug – he told me he had persuaded you to eat. I told you that, didn't I, Debbie? It was the truth!’
‘And you believed it? Knowing what sort of a man he really is?’
Jonathan stood quite still, staring first at his sister-in-law, then at his wife. He felt numb. As though a spear had struck him deep inside, where there are no nerves. Just heart and lungs and liver. And a man's soul.
Slowly, his mind searched through what they had said. He was a lawyer, even in shock. He took things piece by piece.
‘You say that he force fed you – believe me, I did not know that. You say I visited prostitutes at his consulting rooms – that is true. But they were all medically clean, Sarah, I could not infect you. I took good care of that.’
‘And some of them were children?’
‘Some were . . . quite young, yes.’
He met her eyes briefly. Husband to wife, with the memory of all the years they had known each other. Thought they had known each other . . . Then he looked away, his face haggard.
‘Sarah, none of this would have happened if we . . . if you . . . The women I went to, it was for a medical problem, as Martin told me. Perhaps I was foolish to believe it, but that was how it began.’
For a while there seemed no more to say. Once, Jonathan met Deborah's eyes and she looked down. Without thinking about it Jonathan said: ‘I will kill him.’
‘What?’ Deborah gasped. ‘Jonathan, what are you saying?’
‘You heard.’ He turned to Sarah. ‘Clearly I have been a fool and betrayed you, my dear. If I were in your position I would not want to see a man like myself ever again. Perhaps you won't, I don't know. But, whatever you think of me, I value you and I have a score to settle with that man. When I have done that I shall come back and beg forgiveness perhaps, if I can. Till then, take care of each other; and Sarah . . . I am sorry.’
The door closed and he was gone. The two women looked at each other.
‘Does he mean it?’ Deborah asked.