Closed at Dusk (23 page)

William sat loosely on the narrow pew, hands between knees, looking rather wistfully at the bare altar and the small gilt eagle on the lectern. Jo watched his profile, listening with the right expression, if he should turn to her.

‘Sylvia wasn't capable of defying her parents, but gradually, with the encouragement of Troutie, who was married herself by now, she began to plan how she would go off with Jock. But
while she was still getting up her nerve to tell him, Jock got sick of being ostracized, and disappeared.'

‘Oh, – poor Sylvia!' Jo cried, she hoped not too theatrically. ‘What a tragedy.'

‘It scarred her.' William closed his lips and thought for a moment. Then he turned to Jo with a brighter face. ‘Ten years later, she married Eric Taylor, my father: older, unexciting, a solicitor for the land agents which later grew into my firm, Taylor and Birch.'

They went outside and he showed her his mother's grave: ‘Wife of Eric and mother of William, Matthew and Harriet.' Nearby were Beatrice Cobb and Walter, removed from his first resting place in the mausoleum opposite Beatrice's bedroom window; the Reverend Hardcastle had been placed at a discreet distance.

‘Are you going to put your mother's story into the history of The Sanctuary?' Jo asked.

‘Not like that.' William laughed. His face was smiling and boyish again, after being serious in church. ‘It's so sad, and for my mother's sake, it shouldn't be forgotten. So I told it to you because you're a good friend to this family, and you're interested.'

‘I am all of that.' Jo bent to pull a thistle growing roughly above the navel of poor frustrated Sylvia, who seemed to have been one of the dimmer wits of this dynasty.

William went back to the garden, Jo to the village shop to get cough syrup and aspirin for Dorothy, who had gone off to work late with a sore throat, and might not get to the chemist. She was not quite so on top of things these days: less crisply efficient, occasionally forgetful.

The criminal who finally confesses to the cunningly sympathetic police-woman does himself a favour, as well as the police. He may regret the confession in the light of future
events, but the unburdening itself felt good. Marigold was gaining from William's family stories, but he also liked telling them to understanding, concerned Jo.

Marigold had now been dear invaluable Jo, ‘good friend to this family,' for almost six months, and occasionally, when Jo was most pleased with herself, Marigold butted in with irritated revulsion.
Stop being this sickening, Jo!
At first she had been able to snap out of it in an instant, and laugh at her performance and applaud it. Now she could not always do that. She would come home to Bramble Bank and not be able to stop being Jo, busy bee to the Taylors, by appointment. Ringing the house to remind Dorothy about Folly's steroid pill, sending a birthday card to Rob, dipping into the thick pile of papers and letters to make a show of extracting a few notes for William's history.

Remember me? Marigold could not always get back in. There had been times when she had decided: That's it. I can't stand this woman Jo any longer. I've got to abandon this charade and go away. But step by step, Jo led Marigold towards her goal: Flusher, Troutie, Geraldine's lilies, Charlotte, the statue of Bastet. It couldn't stop, until the end.

So Marigold had to let Jo go on, sucking up to William.

‘Ever explored the cellars?' William asked. Jo shook her head. ‘According to Troutie, a lot of the life of The Sanctuary happened down there, when she was a kitchen drudge.'

‘Including the parlour-maid hanging herself in the game room?'

‘Troutie found her. In her cap and apron – makes it worse, doesn't it? Come on, I'm going down to get some wine. I'll give you a quick tour.'

In the basement, he opened the doors of the stone-cold rooms, which had been the kitchen, scullery, game room, larders and servants' hall.

‘When we were children, Matthew and I used to come down here to scare ourselves. These cellars had bad memories for Troutie. She told us to stay away, so of course we came. I saw a ghost here once.'

‘I thought there were no ghosts at The Sanctuary.'

‘No, honest. Right here in the kitchen. Through that high window the sun came swirling down in a wide beam of dust.' His eyes followed the memory down from the grimy half window under the vaulted brick ceiling. ‘I saw something. Tall. White. Too tall. Thought I saw it, I suppose; it must have been the floating light, but I was petrified.' He could feel again the helpless terror, the shock that obliterated reason.

‘What did you do?'

‘Screamed and ran.'

‘Who to?'

‘My mother.'

Jo stood with her hands in the pockets of her plaid trousers, leaning against a stone shelf, waiting.

William turned round to her and said bitterly, ‘I should have gone to Troutie.'

He took a step towards Jo, then stood back with his arms folded, and dropped his chin.

‘Mother was busy. She was putting up camp beds. It was wartime, you know, and we were going to have evacuees. I was terrified – sick with terror. In fact, I
was
sick, on the floor. She stood and looked at it and then looked at me. She didn't know how to cope with it.'

‘What did you do?'

‘Cleaned up the sick, like she told me. No, Jo.' He lifted his head to see her reaction, afraid he had told too much. ‘Don't misjudge. She couldn't cope. She could never cope with emotions, or people needing things from her. But it wasn't her fault. Her mother had shredded her confidence, kept her at
home because she was the only one left, but always as a second best.'

Jo stood against the shelf, taking this in uncritically, but he said defensively, ‘I suppose it wasn't Geraldine's fault either. She'd lost her beloved son. She was a tyrant, but she cherished this place. She tried to follow the ideals of Beatrice and Walter, and she needed Sylvia to help her.'

‘She ruined her chance of love,' Jo said sadly.

‘And do you know something? My mother never told me anything about that, ever. That's how badly she was crippled.'

‘So she took it out on you.'

‘No, it wasn't that.' William felt tormented. The loyal excuses came out with more difficulty, and were strangled by the truth. ‘But she had nothing to give. Nothing, nothing, Jo, do you hear?' He was shouting, but nobody could hear through these dense underground walls. ‘I never had a mother. I tried, I looked for every way to make her love me, but she had gone inside herself long ago, and there was no one there for me.'

Jo had come across the room to him, and when she put her arms round him, it felt natural, and so warm and protective that – oh, God, don't cry, you clown – ‘I – sorry, Jo. I –'

‘It's all right. Hush, it's all right. I know, I know …'

He did not take in what she said. It was just the murmuring and the safety, and he was the little boy Billie, with Troutie giving him what his mother never could, only Jo was supple and clean, not squashy and pungent like Troutie. But there was nothing sexual about the embrace of those strong arms, and the high firm breasts. It was so maternal that when she dropped her arms and he stepped back, it was not hastily, but slowly and naturally, and she said, ‘All right now, Will?' and he said, ‘Thanks.'

Help! What was happening? The avenging demon had turned
into a mother – and it was not an act. It wasn't Jo in that cobwebbed basement kitchen. It had been Marigold, reaching out to the child William with her empty arms. Save us. Jo was losing her grip. Better do something rotten quickly.

The Richardsons were away inspecting a new grandchild, and Jo was feeding their cats. In the bungalow, she automatically had a snoop round. Mrs Richardson's pillowcase of fabric scraps for her interminable cot quilt, which two grandchildren had already outgrown before it was finished, gave her an idea.

While the cats were feeding with voracious delicacy she picked through the multicoloured scraps and found a piece of rather coarse oatmeal linen, part of something like an old-fashioned child's smock.

She took it back to her cottage and cut it into a square, which she carefully hemmed with tiny stitches, as if it might be a man's handkerchief sewn by a woman long ago. In one corner, she embroidered the name ‘Jock', then she tore the handkerchief convincingly into three frayed pieces, so as not to look too perfect. Two of the pieces she put on her fire. The third, with part of the name on it, she dirtied up a bit and took to The Sanctuary.

‘Have you got a moment?' Jo asked William when he came home and found her putting a steak and kidney pie together for weekend guests.

She took him to the end door of the library and stopped in the space between the outer and inner door.

‘Did you know about this?' She put her hand on a painted wood panel.

‘About what?'

She edged a blunt kitchen knife into a crack in the wood, and prised open a tiny door. ‘It's like a little hiding hole.' She turned her bright-painted beam on him. ‘I just discovered it.'

‘Anything inside?'

‘I didn't look.'

She was discreet. You had to give her that. William put his hand into the shallow space. Nothing there but a scrap of cloth. He brought it out and smoothed it. ‘My God.' He showed it to Jo. ‘My mother must have put this in there.'

‘Is that the name of her – the man she loved?'

‘Looks like it. Jock. She must have hidden it here after he'd gone, because this was the room where they met secretly.'

‘That's romantic.' Jo looked at him mistily through those extravagant black eyelashes.

‘Her favourite room.' William shut the little door and put the piece of cloth into his pocket. ‘When she died here …' He had wanted to tell Jo this since he had confided in her in the underground kitchen. ‘I found myself distraught. It didn't matter any more that she hadn't been the mother I wanted. For the first time, I was able to see her life from her point of view, and I was so desperately sorry for her.'

Curious. He had often talked to Dottie about Sylvia, whom she had diagnosed long ago as the ‘not-good-enough mother', responsible for William's ‘Peter Pan syndrome'; but he had never before talked to anyone outside the family, except Ruth, who knew a lot, since she had grown up with them.

Ruth had always been his good friend and confidante, but he did not see much of her these days. She had the baby at home, and its idiotic mother, of course, but – oh, Lord, he hadn't thought of this – might she feel that Jo was edging her out?

William went through the water meadows in search of her. The back door of Ruth's house was open, so he went in, as he always did. The draining-board was piled with dishes. Someone was playing loud music in the sitting-room. Ruth's husband George was sitting by the window with his bad leg up, reading the paper.

Ruth was sorting and folding a mountain of clothes in a laundry basket.

‘Want some tea?'

She did not move towards the kettle, so he said, ‘No, thanks,' and started to help her fold.

‘Not like that.' She took the blue jeans from him. ‘They're not pyjamas, Will.'

‘I haven't seen you for ages,' he said. ‘Everything all right?'

‘Of course.' She raised her eyes to the ceiling, where the baby was crying in a particularly nasty way, and someone was clumping about. ‘This place is like market day, that's all. I did give Dorothy a couple of mornings last week. Does she want me to come up at the weekend? Is that why you came?'

‘I came to see you, silly. But if you could spare a bit of time, we've got three couples coming tomorrow, and I know Dottie would like some help in the kitchen.'

‘Where's Jo then?'

‘Well – she's already done some of the food, I think. She'll come back if she's needed, but I thought it would be nice to have you.'

‘I'm very busy, Will.'

She had never said that before. Bringing up her children, helping with her grandmother, looking after George – she had never been too busy to come to The Sanctuary.

‘Only because you want to do everything here yourself,' George put in from behind the paper. ‘We can do a lot of this stuff. You go on up and give Dorothy a hand.'

‘They don't need me
and
Jo.'

‘Ruth.' William snatched baby garments away and held her hands. ‘I want
you
.'

‘Perhaps another time.' She picked up the baby clothes.

George said, ‘Ruth,' mildly, but as if they'd talked about this before.

William said lamely, ‘Well … come up soon. I want to show you something.'

‘I might, if I get time.' She did not ask what he had to show her, so he did not tell her about the poignant discovery of the relic of Jock.

Ruth was changing. What was wrong? In the old days, if she had felt edged out by Jo, she would have said so.

Too much was changing. He still had the uncertain feeling that the house was in some ways subtly distancing itself. Instead of being part of them, it was watching them, waiting for something. How could he heal the unease? Filling it with people helped, and the weekend went well, although perhaps not quite as easily as usual. The guests left saying they had had a marvellous time, but William did not think they had; or was he putting himself in their places, allotting to them his own inexplicably dissatisfied feeling?

‘What's wrong?' he asked Dottie, when they were alone.

‘Don't always ask
me
what's wrong, Will. What's wrong with
you
?'

‘I don't know. I just feel – everything feels, somehow, not quite right.'

‘They all thought it was wonderful. They're coming back in a couple of weeks.'

‘Oh, it was. It's just not … the same.'

‘Still in love?' Dottie asked rather sharply.