Falling (44 page)

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Authors: Elizabeth Jane Howard

I don’t know what came over me. Too much to drink – and then, if things don’t go my way, sometimes I lose control. I really thought that the ring would do it,
that I had entrapped her at last – that she was mine. Anyway, I got out before too much damage was done – I have learned to do that. Or discovered last night that I have learned. I went
to the shed where I kept an emergency supply of vodka in an orange squash bottle and then I just went off into the woods and found a place to have a fag and a nightcap and then sleep it off.

In the morning I knew that I must eat humble pie. She had locked up the cottage. I tried both doors before I knocked at the back. She let me in at once. I hadn’t reckoned on two things
– how awful she looked, and the suitcase on the kitchen floor.

‘I don’t know what to say to you.’

She stood quite still – looking at me. She seemed quite calm which surprised me. She wasn’t wearing my ring. I began to feel really anxious.

‘Oh, darling – please, please forgive me. I can’t think of any reason why on earth you should. The fact is – I had too much to drink. I’m not used to heavy drinking
and I overdid it. And then I so wanted you to be pleased about the ring – oh, I don’t know. I can’t – were you going away? Running from me? Oh, Daisy, my darling love, what
have I done? You don’t know – I don’t think you can imagine – what you mean to me.’

Standing there, looking at me, she started to sob. I put my arms round her and felt her lean to me as she wept. It was a painful, piteous sound. For minutes we stood there. I knew she must get
it out, whatever she was feeling, and that I must wait. I did this, and gradually, she stopped.

‘I have to go,’ she said at last.

‘No. One thing I promise you. Nothing like this will ever happen again. Will you trust me, darling? I would do anything for you. I’m so dreadfully ashamed. I wouldn’t blame you
for not taking me back, but you are – you have become – my life. So I beg you, don’t go.’

Then she told me that Katya wanted her and she didn’t know why but that it sounded so urgent that she had no choice.

A kind of relief, mixed with irritation, came over me. At least she was not running away from me, but she was going, when I badly needed to repair the damage that had been done. The best course,
it seemed, was to affect concern over Katya, to co-operate, to use affection, to which I knew she was remarkably sensitive. I would drive her to the station, I said. Of course she must go, and I
understood that she must feel anxious.

She had to go at once, she said. She had promised to catch the nine thirty train.

So, I drove her. When we got to the station, I said, ‘Please remember that I love you. This doesn’t make me any better or more in the right. I simply want you to know it.’

And she answered, so quietly that I could hardly hear her. ‘I love you. That is what made it so—’ Then, and I could see it was an effort of trust, she said, ‘I was
frightened. You frightened me.’

There was silence, and then she said, ‘Why did you do it? How could you – hit me – if you loved me?’

‘When you come back, I’ll tell you. You never escape damage, really. Damage means damage. I’ve been hit a good deal. I suppose you could say it became a kind of marker for
feeling.’

I picked up one of her hands and kissed it. ‘But it’s not like Wilde. I love you – I shan’t ever kill that. May I kiss you before you go?’

She turned her face to me: her lips were cold, but her eyes, when we drew apart, revealed what I needed to know.

I saw her into the train, of course.

‘You’ll ring me about coming back?’ I looked at her with the most beseeching affection and she said yes. Then the train was starting and I had to go. I stood looking at her,
and as the train moved, I blew her a kiss, but I am not sure whether she saw it.

As I drove back via the town post office I began to wonder what on earth could have happened to Katya to bring about this sudden journey to her side. All I could think of was that she had found
she was pregnant (by Edwin, presumably) and did not want the child. It was certainly hard on Daisy – who had been subdued by exhaustion as much as anything else. I knew from the dark circles
under her eyes that she had not slept, and sleepless nights don’t suit women of her age.

And then I thought that I should have offered to go with her, but it was too late for that now.

19
DAISY

Finally, after the endless ride in the cab with Anthony who had met her at the station, after the climb up Anna’s stairs (‘Katya is with Anna,’ he had said
when she asked why they were going there – it was the only question he answered), she was sitting in one of Anna’s battered armchairs opposite the three of them. There was coffee on the
table but nobody was drinking it.

‘What
is
it? It’s clearly something awful –
what is it?’

Anna said, ‘It’s about Henry. I’m afraid it’s very bad news about Henry.’

‘Has he had an accident? He drove me to the station—’ She stopped because they had asked her to come before he could possibly have had an accident.

‘No. He’s not what you think at all. He’s a con man. He’s a liar, he’s a fraud, and he’s dangerously violent.’

There was a stunned silence. Then she said, ‘You’d better tell me why you think that.’ She felt furiously angry with all of them, sitting there, treating her like a child or a
fool. ‘Go on. Don’t spare me. Tell me everything you know that makes you think he’s so bad.’

Anthony said, ‘When Katya and I went down to see Edwin, we went on to Rackham. We saw Lady Carteret, Daphne’s mother.’

‘And?’

‘Anna showed us the letters he wrote before we went,’ Katya said. ‘Oh, Ma, I didn’t want to do this, but the others said we must. He lied to you about Daphne.’

‘For God’s sake, tell me exactly what
happened.
Don’t leave anything out. Stop just accusing him.’

‘She’s quite right,’ Anna said. ‘Tell her the whole story. What it was like when you went there.’

‘We didn’t even know if she was there, or even if she was still alive. We stopped at the lodge at one of the entrances. It all looked so seedy – the drive was just weeds and
there was a woman hanging up washing outside it. She said old Lady Carteret did live there, in one corner at the back of the place. The house, when we got to it, looked completely shut up but we
drove round to the back and there were two or three windows without shutters and a black door with most of the paint off. We pulled a kind of iron bell pull and heard it jangling, and then we heard
someone coming. It was a very old lady, with short, untidy white hair, who said, “I thought you were Thomas, or I wouldn’t have opened the door,” and began shutting it.

‘I asked if she was Lady Carteret. She was wearing trousers and a jersey with food spilled on it and I thought she was probably a faithful old servant. But she said she was. Anthony said
that it would be very kind of her if she would spare a few minutes to talk to us about Henry Kent. She said, “I don’t want to hear that name in this house!” and banged her stick
on the stone floor. I said, please would she, because my mother had got entangled with him and I was extremely anxious.

‘“I should think you would be,” she said.

‘Anthony said he was sure it wasn’t good for her to stand, and couldn’t we sit somewhere just for a few minutes, and he took her arm very gently and smiled at her, and she
liked it.

‘She took us to a very small room that had a kitchen range in it and other kitchen things, and an upright canvas chair which she sat in and we sat at the table. Then she said that Henry
Kent was an “infamous villain”. Those were her words.

‘I told her we knew that he’d been in love with her daughter, and she said, “Oh, you do, do you? And what else do you know?”

‘Anthony said, “I’m sure this is not true, but he alleges that you stopped them marrying because in fact they were related.”

‘“Related?
Related?”
she repeated. “In what way related?”

‘He told her Henry had said they both had the same father.

‘She stared at us for a moment and then said, “That is the most monstrous lie. He was an accomplished liar, but that is, is – utterly monstrous!
I
did not stop them
marrying. But by then he had long ceased to pull the wool over my eyes. He was simply on the make. He thought Daphne, as the only child, would inherit a great deal of money –
that
was
what he wanted. When I told him that she would not, not a penny, you could not see him for dust.

‘“He left his father’s cottage that same night. I did not turn the father out. He had been with us for years and it was not his fault. But I told him not to allow the boy back.
And that was that.” There was a silence, while she hunted in an old shopping-bag and found cigarettes, one of which she fitted into a surprisingly elegant green and gold holder.

‘Anthony produced a lighter. She bent her head towards him, and he said, “How awful for you. That was the end of the story?”

‘“No, it was not. He left my Daphne pregnant and, of course, devastated, as anyone would be when their first love turns out to be a mere money-grabber who had never loved her.”
Another silence. “He broke her heart. She did marry someone else in the end.
Faute de mieux:
she simply could not manage on her own. It’s not much of a marriage. She lives in
Australia now. I never see her. I’m too old for that journey, and she could never bear this place after what happened to her.”

‘Then I burst out in my usual tactless way, “You could have given her money! After Mr Kent left.” And she said, “Mr Kent indeed! We called him Hal and his father was
Kent.”

‘Then she said, “There is one more thing that perhaps you should know. My husband, who was always frail – his health was wrecked on the Somme – died of a heart-attack. I
found him. He recovered enough to . . .” and she said we couldn’t imagine how hard for him it was to face
her
with the question of Daphne’s parentage. She’d never
told him about Hal’s conduct, you see. She thought it might kill him to know. She sent Daphne away to have the baby and it was adopted, but he never knew about any of that. But he told her
then he had had an anonymous note. She never saw the note; he had burned it. It simply alleged that Daphne was the result of her liaison with the gardener. The writer thought he ought to know. She
looked hard at us for a moment after this, and then with a huge effort at control, she said, “I don’t even know whether Reggie, my husband, believed or even heard what I said. He died
minutes later. He was very distressed.” Her voice had become unsteady and she frowned. Her own distress was miserably evident. When she’d recovered a bit, she told us that the joke, of
course, was that there was no money anyway. Reggie had been too unwell to pay attention to his investments; there were death duties. Nobody wanted to buy the house: there was no money at all except
for a legacy left her by a godfather and they couldn’t touch that. All that unhappiness, that anguish, even, was for nothing. “I rot here,” she said, “and the house rots
round me.” Then she said, “I am telling you all this and I do not even know your names. Or do I know them?”

‘We said no, and told her. She said something about hoping that we were Thomas who was mending her wireless . . . Then, without any warning, she began to cry – not making any sound,
just tears. She fumbled in her trouser pocket and brought out a much-used handkerchief. She said, “My dog died, you see. It is very hard to be without him. I’m sorry I can’t offer
you tea.” So we went.’

All three of them were silent.

‘So that’s it? That’s what you found out.’

Anna said, ‘Only some of it. I found out about Charley, too.’

‘How on earth did you do that?’

‘I’m afraid I’d got suspicious of Henry. I asked him where he had worked in Kent. I asked quite casually, because I said I knew some people who had a wonderful garden there,
and I wondered whether he’d heard of it. And he said, yes, but his place was the other side of Tonbridge – people called Mead.

‘After I read the letters, I went to St Catherine’s House. There was no death certificate for a Charley or Charlotte Mead or Kesler that remotely fitted with his dates. Then I knew
something was wrong. You remember he described the garden, and the huge swimming pool shaped like an S? That was a starting point.’

‘Did
you
do all this sleuthing?’

‘No, I didn’t, Daisy. I paid someone to do it. But when they’d found the house, and the Mrs Mead who lived there, then I rang her up and asked if I might see her. She seemed
nervous and kept asking what it was about, and in the end I said it was about Henry Kent who wanted to marry my oldest friend and that I was worried, and she agreed.’

‘And what did
she
tell you? What’s the next story?’ Even Daisy could not recognize her own voice.

‘Well, she was a woman in her sixties, very carefully dressed as a country lady. The house was posh nineteen twenties; a lot of pink and fumed oak inside. She gave me tea in what she
called her morning room, although it faced the wrong way to be that.

‘I began by telling her that Henry had told you that Charley was dead, had died trying to open a window. She wanted to know why on earth he’d said that. I said that as he’d
been married to Charley and presumably not divorced, and he wanted to marry someone else, he had to say she was dead. Mrs Mead was amazed at this and said he was never married to her! Not
married.
Apparently her father wanted Charley to marry one of his City friends – he was very hard on Charley about it and she’d always been afraid of him. She wasn’t the
pretty little daughter he’d wanted, so he was always hard on her – a bit of a bully. He was obviously a man who liked to get his own way. Anyway, without any warning, she found one day
that Charley had gone. She left her a note. She’d taken all her jewellery that they’d given her to Come Out, and one or two other things, and she said that she wanted to marry
“Harry” Kent, who was the gardener there. She’d left no address – they’d no idea where she was. Mrs Mead wanted to get people to find Charley – the police or
someone – but her husband (she said she thought he was going to have a stroke) was so angry he wanted to “let her stew in her own juice”. He never wanted to see her again. He
called her a tart! She said excuse her using the word but that was what he’d said – about his own daughter! Nobody would ever want to marry her now, he said. He washed his hands of her,
and told his wife to have nothing to do with her if she came whining back.

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