Authors: Elizabeth Buchan
There was a space and then Hesther had written, ‘Lovely, lovely.’
Matty smoothed the page. This was Hesther, a bit of her at least, and there was a strong answering echo in Matty to the woman who had written ‘Lovely, lovely’ about her roses.
Because her eyes were still streaming, she nearly missed the letters. They were tucked into the back of the book, tied into a packet with black ribbon, creased from being tied and untied. She opened the first and read:
My Darling,
Nothing is in its proper place. Ideas, things, humans. The world has gone crazy, and we are crazed with it.
Shall I tell you the worst thing? It’s not the blood nor the mud, nor the sights, nor the boredom and discomfort, nor the blasted stiff upper lip of Rupert. No, it is none of those things, bad as they are. It’s the knowledge that this war is so terrible and so senseless that anyone who is not in it cannot understand. The war will make a gap between us... we will be on different sides.
Matty could not read the signature.
Written in the same hand, the second letter was shorter and to the point.
I am going with Rupert tomorrow to Amiens. Can you send some sewing things, socks, extra handkerchiefs and a fruit cake...
The third letter began,
My darling, did I ramble in my previous letters? If I did I am sorry, particularly if it cost my dearest most sweet flower any pain. Write to me soon, my heart, for we are ordered back to the front. Tell me about the garden and what you have been doing to improve it. I want to hear everything, down to the last leaf. By the way, I think you should plant the lilies where the sun warms them, and the climbing rose (as white as your skin) on the wall. I enclose a sketch to show you what I mean. Corporal Stevens tells me that ‘Tuscany’ (he pronounces it Tooscani) is the old velvet rose. Nothing to beat its colour he says, as ‘dark as blood’.
Here there was a competent pen sketch of the garden, which Matty immediately recognized, criss-crossed with arrows and labels, followed by, ‘goodbye, darling’.
Underneath that Hesther had written:
his last letter.
And underneath that someone else had written:
Bitch.
Whose last letter? Who did Hesther love so much, and was it Rupert who, having found out Hesther loved someone else, had thrown her things into a trunk after her death?
Matty did not read any more. She folded the letters and put them back into the book which fell open at the page where the rose had been.
Lovely, lovely.
An unease slid over the room, stretching over silent objects, over White Surrey, the
bébé
doll and the pensioned-off teddy bears. Matty piled Hesther’s things back into the trunk. She knew without question that the letters spelt muddle, pain and disorder, and that they affected everyone in the house. Banging down the lid, she fled.
This, then, was the focus of the family into which Matty had married, the secret map.
Since Rupert’s accident, Kit had taken over the financial affairs of the household. Things were worse than he had imagined but, hostile as he often felt towards Rupert, Kit did not blame his father. Before Matty came with her rescue package, it had required fiscal brilliance to balance the outgoings of Hinton Dysart with its modest income from rents and crops, added to which there were always pinpricks: nail fatigue in the roof, an outbreak of dry rot in the stables, vets’ bills, new fencing.
Matty’s money was not only welcome, it was vital. Kit found himself in the position of a beggar whose wish had been granted, which drove him to several conclusions he had not considered when he accepted Matty’s proposal. Money smoothed and effected, but it also shackled. It brought choice and comfort but not, necessarily, happiness.
Nevertheless, he was grateful to Matty, truly he was grateful.
The Verral lawyers had transferred capital in favour of Hinton Dysart and he was careful to use it only on the upkeep of the house. Naturally, the lawyers sought to safeguard Matty and Kit supported them, despite her wish to settle capital on him.
‘You’re quite generous enough,’ Kit reiterated to his wife. ‘I wish I could show you how grateful I am.’
They were taking a morning walk up Croft Lane towards the church. Minerva, the Clumber spaniel (Matty’s birthday present to Kit), rooted excitedly in the undergrowth. The verge was thick with corncockles and rosebay willowherb, and sprays of china pink dog rose arched above their heads.
‘It’s nothing,’ she replied, repressing a reply that he was quite able to show her, easily, then dismissed the thought as absurd. ‘I have the money. You need it.’
‘Even so,’ Kit insisted. He sounded calm but Matty was aware of Kit’s ambivalent feelings and, since she had learnt a thing or two about managing him, deployed evasion tactics. ‘The fence up by Lee Wood. Have you decided on which kind?’
Kit clicked his fingers at Minerva. ‘Sycamore,’ he said. ‘Nothing else is any good.’
Kit wished to generate money of his own and began to shake off his obsession with the East, to look out at the rest of the world and take an interest in what was happening there. The scenery was complicated. The American stock-market crash, towering unemployment figures, an expensive British empire, an economy at odds with itself, these factors released forces no one understood. Raby had done his homework and Kit purchased stock in vacuum cleaners and a business that made wireless sets to a new, streamlined specification. As yet, there was no return. ‘If only I’d waited until I’d tried a Hoover,’ went an advertisement in a magazine Kit had picked up in the dentist’s waiting room. ‘Don’t be rushed or persuaded into buying any old vacuum cleaners.’
No, indeed. The great British public had nothing to spend and nothing to wait for. In this manner, politics crept into Kit’s life.
‘Patience,’ said Howard Raby. ‘Patience, Mr Dysart.’
Raby was right. At this point, Kit made a second discovery. The Bible had dealt with only half the problem of charity. As he signed the bills with his wife’s money he understood with blistering clarity how much easier it was to give than to receive.
Meanwhile, at Hinton Dysart, two decades’ worth of papers in files and drawers required sorting – and that was only the beginning. After the Season had ground to a halt in London, in a flurry of stained satin shoes and ruined reputations, Kit came home. Very quickly he established the routine of retiring to the Exchequer after breakfast. A cigarette burning nacreous rings into the ashtray, a congealing cup of tea, and he was more or less content.
There was little to surprise, but quite a lot to intrigue, for the Exchequer contained the record of the house’s life. In ‘Stables’ he found bills for oats, bran and linseed, horse rugs, saddle soap and a chaff-cutting machine, in ‘House’, bills for soap, blacklead and furniture polish, which his mother had ordered once a year from the Army and Navy Stores. Where these industrial quantities had been stored Kit was not sure.
The file that interested him most was thick, buff-coloured and labelled ‘Hesther Dysart, née Kennedy’.
On the top were letters and Kit found himself making the acquaintance of the grandfather he had never met. Charles Kennedy showed himself to be rich, bluff and decisive, anxious to make a substantial marriage settlement on his daughter. Figures on a balance sheet showed how much he had donated in capital and stock, and the dates when Rupert realized the cash. Nothing untoward about that, except for the abrupt cessation of the support. Judging by the correspondence, the relationship between the American and his English son-in-law had not been cordial, but it did not explain the thick black line drawn under the date, 30 September 1916. After that, there were no entries in the accounts, nothing.
Kit dragged deeply on a cigarette. His mother died in September 1916. Charles died in early 1919, followed by Euphemia, his wife and Kit’s grandmother, a year later. It was odd that neither of them had made any provision for their grandchildren. In fact, his grandfather had gone out of his way to cut them off.
Kit pushed the letters aside. Of course he knew why.
He leafed through the statements of account from Messrs Coutts and the summary of stock-holdings, and compared them with the list that Raby had compiled. They were consistent and depressingly accurate.
At first Kit took no notice of the modest-looking document attached to the back of the file. The pin had rusted and left marks on what turned out to be a share certificate. Apparently, in June 1910, Hesther had acquired 100,000 shares at the cost of one cent each in a company specializing in real estate in a suburb of Los Angeles called Hollywood. It was thought, read the accompanying prospectus, that the climate and scenery would attract home-dwellers.
That was clever advice, thought Kit, draining his cold tea. The film industry is there. He replaced the document in the file, dropped it back into the desk drawer and locked it.
At exactly four o’clock in the morning, he woke up. There was no noise, and he was comfortable. Puzzled, he rolled over onto his back and bunched up the pillow. Gradually, it became clear to him that his brain was moving round a fixed point. Kit had never seen those Hollywood shares ticked off on Raby’s checklist.
In the adjoining bedroom, Matty was also awake and heard Kit come out of his bedroom and go down the stairs. Woken by her demon, who always chose her most defenceless moments to attack, she had been staring into the dark. Determined to dislodge him, she swung her legs over the bed.
As usual in summer the house seemed warmer at night than during the day. Kit padded down the staircase and along the passage towards the Exchequer. The room was acrid and un-aired. He switched on the light, emptied an overflowing ashtray into the bin, and threw wide the window. The night air poured into the room. He opened the drawer, pulled out the buff file and spread it in front of him.
He worked through the first column of figures before he allowed himself a lift of excitement and was checking the second when a footstep in the passage made him leap to his feet. The chair went crashing over and Matty appeared in the doorway.
‘Matty! For God’s sake. What are you doing?’ Kit picked up the chair and inspected it.
Matty advanced into the room. ‘Sorry, Kit. I didn’t mean to alarm you.’
‘It’s all right. Couldn’t you sleep?’ Kit leant against the desk.
Matty nudged her chin at the papers. ‘No. I couldn’t. What’s all this?’
‘Fortune-hunting.’
Her eyes opened wide. ‘How?’
Kit explained he had found some unaccounted-for stock and intended to track it down. As he talked, his face wavered in and out of the circle of light cast by the lamp, and Matty was reminded of the photograph of the twelve-year-old Kit. She was tactless enough to say, ‘Don’t we have enough money, Kit?’
He went over to the cupboard by the door and flung it open. ‘I think I have some whisky in here,’ he said. ‘Want some?’
‘Yes, please.’
The whisky was excellent. Kit hugged his glass and said, ‘If I explained that I cannot be in your pay all my life, would you be hurt, Matty?’
Yes, she wanted to say. Is it so awful? Instead, she drank more whisky and replied, ‘I suppose not.’
‘I don’t expect you to understand, but please believe me when I say I am grateful for everything you have done.’
‘Yes,’ said Matty from the wilderness.
Kit stared at his wife. ‘No, I don’t think you do, Matty, but it doesn’t matter. Look. I want to make a little money of my own and I want to use it to go into politics.’
‘Oh,’ said Matty.
‘Times are changing,’ said Kit. ‘And I want to be in on the changes.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I think I understand.’
‘Matty, I’m going to make a short trip to America to chase some business I’ve found that needs finishing. Is that all right with you?’
‘If I said no?’
‘I’d still go,’ he said. ‘But I wouldn’t like it.’
‘Go,’ said Matty, a little drunkenly.
By now, the dawn chorus was in full throttle. A pencil of light appeared through the window and spread over the room’s grubby interior. Kit talked on and Matty listened, feeling rejected and in the position of a benefactor who had wanted to be loved but had been used instead. Common sense then pointed that Kit had not asked for her money and he was, at least, talking to her.
The whisky glugged as Kit refilled the glasses. He clinked his against Matty’s. ‘Cheer up.’ More footsteps echoed down the passage.
‘What are you doing?’ A hairbrush in her hand, Robbie appeared in the doorway. Husband and wife looked at each other and Kit shrugged. Matty’s bottom lip twitched.
‘Sorry, Robbie. Did we wake you?’ said Kit. ‘Have some whisky.’
But Robbie had been frightened and her heart was beating a violent tattoo. She was also annoyed that her gallantry was for nothing. ‘I thought there were thieves in the kitchens and murderers on the stairs.’
‘Poor Robbie.’ Kit scraped back his chair and stood up.
‘You make me so angry sometimes, Mr Kit.’ Robbie moved towards him to berate him further, and her dressing gown fell apart, revealing a voluptuously scalloped, lace-edged nightgown. The sight was so unexpected that both Matty’s and Kit’s eyes widened in surprise.
‘You must get up to bed at once, Mrs Kit.’ Robbie snatched at the dressing gown, pulled it across her chest and one large breast sprang into relief under the blue flannel. Above it hung her angry face and pepper-and-salt plait. ‘You have no business to be up frightening the life out of me.’
‘Robbie,’ said Kit, ‘my wife will go to bed when she wishes.’
‘It was very thoughtless, Mr Kit.’ Robbie cut him off. ‘There I was, scared to death. I shall feel quite dreadful later.’
‘Robbie,’ said Kit. ‘Go back to bed. Take a sleeping draught or something.’
He looked impatiently at the figure who, throughout his childhood, had bullied, exacted, cajoled and, through no fault of her own, failed to give him comfort.
Robbie may have been thick-skinned but she was not immune to pain and the figure inside the protective dressing gown seemed to dwindle. Matty took pity. ‘Kit, Miss Robson has been frightened,’ she said, frowning at him. She turned to Robbie. ‘Actually, I could do with a hot drink before I go back to sleep.’