The Widow's Confession (22 page)

‘One would be a fool not to see it,’ she said.

‘She would be the perfect subject for me,’ he said. ‘I cannot paint those who inspire strong emotion in me, you see – those I love, and those I hate. I must be detached,
as I am with her. She is a beautiful stranger.’

‘But Mrs Quillian has told me that you often paint your wife and children,’ said Delphine. The answer to her words was all in his look – a glint of humour, a shrug – that
truly chilled her.

‘Yet you have such influence over Alba,’ he said. ‘Over all of us. I dearly wish to paint her. Perhaps you could put a word in for me – calm that rigid, fussy aunt of
hers. I deplore that kind of narrow-minded conventionality.’

‘Yet you seem to me to embrace it,’ said Delphine, anger firing her words. ‘A villa in Ramsgate for the summer, a wife and family, fine clothes and carriages. You could,
perhaps, argue about the conventionality you seem to deplore and yet have embraced. There is no need to play-act sympathy with me; we are not the same. I don’t know what you wish to entangle
me in, but do not try it, I beg you, Mr Benedict, for your own sake. If you believe your art dealer, you will know that I am not a moral woman. If you make any move against me, or my cousin, I will
not hesitate to destroy you. It would not be difficult for me.’ She could not help it; her mouth trembled into a kind of smile, against her will.

‘You are afraid,’ he said. ‘Such an extreme threat saddens me. I do not mean you any harm – I mean only to warn you that, even here, people are curious about strangers.
In my character, I am closer to you than you think. I have my own secrets. I know what it is to live with them, to sleep, wrapped in them – to never be able to show my true face to the world.
I warn you because I wish you well. You have created a desire in so many people, Mrs Beck, and when a desire is not satisfied, it is easy for it to turn into something else – something
darker.’

Delphine turned away. As she did so, he took her wrist, a disrespectful gesture which showed, she thought, how far his opinion had fallen. ‘I am your friend,’ he said. ‘In all
that follows, pray remember that.’

The sunlight showed no sign of softening when, at last, the picnic hampers were opened.

‘There are fine views across the fields,’ said Julia. Edmund’s hand met hers as they both reached for the jug of lemonade, and he flinched away, as bashful as a youth. He could
have kicked himself for it.

‘I shall have to set up my easel at last,’ said Benedict. ‘Or perhaps you can, Mrs Beck. I am sure you could make the most of that view.’

‘It is certainly a lovely scene,’ said Theo, who had taken out a tiny leather notebook and was sketching with a pencil. ‘I might even be tempted away from recording the
cliffside grasses. To record this view, and put it on my study wall, would refresh my senses every time I come to look at it.’

‘I think you do not understand, Mr Hallam,’ said Benedict, his hand stirring amongst the long grass, his lips wet with lemonade. ‘I was not speaking of an amateur’s
enthusiasm. Mrs Beck sees things with a painter’s eye.’

‘I have painted,’ said Theo. ‘I think I know a little of what you mean.’ His eyes met Delphine’s and a smile flitted across his face, so swiftly that she wondered
if she had imagined it.

‘Forgive me,’ said Benedict, ‘but with respect, I must say that I do not think you do. You paint, I think, to record – to collect – with precision, yes, but not
with,’ he put his hand on his chest, ‘this.’

Miss Waring gave an embarrassed laugh, shrugging at Theo, as though to proclaim her lack of understanding of the situation. ‘This is,’ she said, leaning in to Alba, ‘perhaps
not quite as it should be. It is a little improper. Listen to the birdsong, my dear.’

‘For me,’ Benedict went on, ‘to live a passionate, full life is vital to a painter. Observation is essential, of course. I must feel – then I must stand back. Only when
an emotion is past can I summon it in my pictures. But to paint human nature without being part of that great glorious medley would be an empty gesture, like trying to paint the sea from the
shore.’

‘It is possible,’ said Delphine, ‘to paint the sea from the shore.’

‘But wouldn’t you rather be lashed to the mast of a boat, as Mr Turner was? I would. The viewers of your painting would rather you were. You are their medium, you see: through you,
they can feel, they can know. Everything.’

Delphine followed Theo’s gaze. He was staring at the sudden, empty delight of Alba’s expression, as though the painter had articulated something she felt. She saw a flash of anger in
his eyes.

‘We paint for different reasons, perhaps,’ he said. Benedict inclined his head and tried to keep his expression agreeable, but Delphine could see the contempt there. And there was a
definite sense, in the midst of the party, that some line had been crossed, and the day had turned.

After the picnic, the party dispersed. Miss Waring was the first to express a desire to return to the hotel; she was supported in this by Mrs Quillian. Alba, thwarted in an
attempt to collect more shells, climbed into the carriage with the older ladies and waved from the window as it pulled away. After half an hour or so of wandering, and gathering flowers, Julia and
Delphine decided they wished to walk on the beach; to their surprise, Theo, Edmund and Benedict stayed with them. Though the painter trailed some distance behind them, Delphine felt uncomfortable
in his presence.

Joss Bay, along the coast from the busier Main Bay, was almost deserted, and everyone expressed their delight at having it nearly to themselves. They had not been on the beach long, moving
slowly across the wide expanse of sand, when Delphine saw a figure approaching them. She put her parasol back and raised one lace-gloved hand over her eyes to shield them from the sun.

It was a child, running.

‘Look,’ she said.

‘You know what children are, on the beach,’ said Julia.

‘No,’ said Delphine. ‘Something’s wrong.’

It was she who set off towards the child, moving more quickly than propriety demanded; she who first saw the terror in his face, dropped her parasol, and held out her hands to him, as the small
creature, not more than eight years old, ran into her arms then clung to her, pulling her, his hands entwined in her dress.

‘You must come!’ he shouted. ‘Murder! My sister! My sister! She’s dying!’

She hardly knew how it happened, for in an instant the boy had left her side, and she saw Edmund and Theo begin to run, then Benedict join them, following the child as he set his trail across
the beach, his feet picking up sharply from the damp sand. Hobbled by their dresses, the women followed, Julia’s hand in Delphine’s, and Delphine found herself repeating the
Lord’s Prayer and heard the disjointed gasp of her cousin’s weeping as they hurried around the curve of the cliff.

The girl lay, face down on the sand, but even as the first shock of the sight of her subsided, Delphine could see that she was moving, attempting to raise herself onto her wrists, then falling
again, as though her limbs and body were too heavy to work properly.

‘She’s drunk something,’ cried the little boy.

Edmund knelt down beside the girl and turned her over. Julia hurried to him, opened her smelling salts and held them to the girl’s face. The child jerked awake.

‘I’m sorry, little one,’ said Edmund, ‘but I have to do this.’ And he pushed his fingers into her mouth, all the way back to her throat. Julia turned away and
covered her eyes. The girl wrenched herself from Edmund’s grasp, twisted round and vomited onto the sand.

Delphine gently manoeuvred Edmund aside, then rubbed her hand over the girl’s back, holding her golden plaits out of her way. ‘Get it all out,’ she said and, as if on cue, the
girl vomited again.

‘Bessie,’ sobbed the little boy. ‘Bessie, get up. You can’t die. Bessie, Bessie!’

‘What’s your name, boy?’ said Theo, crouching down to be on a level with the child, and looking into his eyes. ‘Where are your parents?’

‘I’m Jack, Jack Dalton,’ said the boy. ‘Ma and Pa are up at the Digby. Said we weren’t to disturb them, but just play here – and we did, we did.’

‘I’m sure you did,’ said Theo, still holding him firmly by the shoulders. ‘Come now, Jack, I am sure your sister will be all right. What happened?’

The child sobbed, wiping one hand across his nose.

‘Where are you, God damn you?’ shouted Mr Benedict, turning wildly this way and that, surveying the coast – where they had come from, and what was ahead – but the natural
bays and curves of the cliffs provided the perfect blind turns for whoever had been there, only moments before. As he turned, he caught sight of something in the sand.

‘God,’ he said. ‘Oh, God, Steele – look. There is more to this.’

Edmund followed his gaze to the sand. ‘What does it say?’ he said, trying to keep his voice steady.

‘It makes no sense,’ said Benedict. ‘It says
MARY
.’

‘She must have did that when I came for you,’ cried Jack, snatches of words between sobs. ‘I broke away from her. She gave us sweets, but mine tasted funny and I spat it out
without her seeing. She said I would feel sleepy, that I needed a rest, and I was to lie down and close my eyes. Bessie wouldn’t have the sweets, as Ma always says she is too fat, but then
the lady offered her a drink of ginger beer, and she took a mouthful. I’d done what she said, but when I saw she was going to drag Bessie away, I got up and ran. She tried to come after me,
but I was too quick, and Bessie must have been too heavy for her to do it all.’

‘Who did this?’ cried Benedict, disbelief tearing across his face.

‘A lady,’ wept Jack. ‘I didn’t see her face. She had put a veil over her bonnet. A black veil.’

They all fell silent then, apart from the poor girl groaning on the sand. But it seemed to hit the painter the hardest. Before anyone could go to his aid, Benedict had turned away, and he, too,
had vomited.

Of Reculver, I remember the cold – the kind of cold you feel in your bones – the desolation of that spot, even in midsummer, though I do not know whether we
found desolation there or brought it with us, this strange group of travellers.

The chill, deep blue of the sea, the grey of the flint towers, the clouds tracking above us, edged with light, hinting at the hidden radiance of the sun behind them . . . it is all stamped
into my memory. And it is not a dead thing, like pressed flowers, or a shell washed clean of its sand; it lives and scintillates, so that sometimes from my chair, I have watched it in my mind, a
scene before me, on the canvas of the empty walls of the room.

‘Jack,’ said Theo, ‘go and fetch your parents now – and quickly.’

Delphine could tell that the little boy’s instinct was to obey. He had taken a step back at the words, as though ready to run, but then he looked around – at the other men, at Julia,
at her. She realized, with a terrible despair, that he did not trust them.

‘What if she comes back?’ he said, in a small voice.

‘Jack . . .’ It was Bessie. She groaned, and coughed a little more.

‘We will look after her,’ said Theo. ‘Go and get them, now. Go!’

Jack knelt beside his sister and put his face close to hers. ‘I’ll fetch Ma and Pa,’ he said, ‘I won’t be long.’ The look she gave him seemed to be enough to
reassure him. He ran off across the beach.

Edmund went to Benedict. The painter had crawled a little way from where he had been sick. ‘Someone must fetch the doctor for the child,’ Edmund said. ‘If I go, will you help
Mr Hallam?’

‘I will go,’ said Benedict tightly. ‘My horse is up on the cliff; I will be faster than you.’ He stared at the wet sand for a moment as Edmund held his hand out to help
him up. Benedict seemed to be trying to summon some strength, for his breathing was hard and ragged. And then a cry broke from him. ‘What kind of woman?’ It was picked up by the wind
and cast across the beach, after the little boy.

‘An unnatural one,’ Theo said, kneeling on the sand beside the child. ‘That is the kind.’

Edmund, Theo, Delphine and Julia all laboured to keep Bessie awake, and succeeded. When her parents arrived, distressed, and led by Jack, still running as though the devil was behind him, they
seemed awed – and displeased – to find a clergyman ministering to their daughter. Once they had ascertained that the girl was alive, and unlikely to die at that particular moment, they
were more concerned with defending themselves against accusations of neglect.

‘We only left them a few moments,’ the mother said, straightening her bonnet. ‘Are you sure it is that bad? Were you play-acting, Jack?’

‘There is no acting of any type,’ said Theo. ‘Something very serious has happened here.’

‘Well, if it has, it’s not our fault,’ said the father roughly. ‘And I don’t care to be lectured, sir.’

When Dr Crisp arrived he looked highly displeased to see the group he had met near the chalkpit a few weeks before. He gave curt greetings, and paused beside Delphine. ‘I see you are here
again, madam,’ he said. ‘I have hardly had time to forget your face.’

‘The patient is over here,’ said Theo sharply.

Dr Crisp knelt beside Bessie and began to examine her. Her eyelids were drooping again, and with startling efficiency he dealt her a swift slap around the side of her face, which made Delphine
wince. ‘Eyes open,’ he commanded.

‘Don’t cause the doctor any trouble, Bessie,’ said the mother, somewhat primly.

‘The constable should be called,’ said Benedict, who had been walking up and down nearby. ‘And as quickly as possible. The boy could give a description of the woman who did
this.’

‘I didn’t see her face. She was wearing a very thick veil,’ said Jack.

‘Well, you’re right, it’s not just the sun,’ said Dr Crisp, opening his bag and rummaging through it. ‘She’s been given a dose of something – an opiate,
probably. It can’t be so very much, otherwise she wouldn’t be talking to us. She may recover well enough without anything, but to be safe I can give her an emetic.’

‘Will that cost anything?’ said the mother. She glanced, with something like shame, at Delphine.