Charles Todd - Watchers of Time

“I didn’t refuse to remember, as you put it. And he didn’t believe any such thing!” She was flushed, her chin high and her eyes bright. “I can’t understand why you keep harping on it. He just felt that the nightmares would stop if I could face them once and for all. And I couldn’t; I wasn’t ready. He never forced me to go back to that night-he was careful. We tried to discuss less frightening experiences, who had the cabins next to mine, the people I sat with at meals, what I wore the first evening out-and I couldn’t even remember that!”

Hamish scolded, “The lass is tired. Let it go.”

Rutledge heard him. He said to May Trent, trying to make amends, “I’m not hounding you-”

“You are!” she said angrily. “You’re worse than Father James ever was. You don’t know what it is like to be haunted, you’ve never sat up screaming in bed in the middle of the night, hearing the dying cry out for help and knowing that you will live and they won’t-! ”

Exhausted as he himself was, the strength of her emotions touched him on the raw. His own anger flared with unwitting heat.

“Don’t I? I live it with every breath I take- ”

Hamish’s voice was sharp. “You mustna’ betray yoursel’!”

Rutledge’s iron will shut off the flow of words even as he heard the warning. His face had grown so white and so strained that May Trent reached out a hand to him, as if to stop him, too. And then she dropped it.

They stared at each other in horrified silence.

Rutledge thought, I’ve never come so close Hamish was still yelling at him, dinning in his head like the German guns, until he could barely function. “Ye’re vulnerable because she’s the first woman who’s been through the same horror-”

But Rutledge didn’t care. How far had she seen inside his own grief? As far as he’d seen into the depths of hers? He didn’t know. It was not something he wanted to think about. It didn’t bear thinking about…

Sims and Father Holston, watching the two of them, immobilized by the sudden silence after the fierce intensity of their exchange, were unwilling witnesses.

And into the electrical atmosphere that no one knew quite how to cope with, the door opened and the housekeeper, Bryony, wheeled in the ornate walnut cart with the heavy Victorian tea service gleaming in the lamplight.

THE VICAR GOT TO HIS FEET. “Monsignor Holston, if you’ll have your housekeeper summon a cab for us, I’ll see Miss Trent safely on the next train-”

Monsignor Holston, rising as well, cut across his words. “I expect that Inspector Rutledge can explain-”

But it was May Trent who collected herself with an effort and said, “No. We need to finish this.” She turned to Bryony and thanked her for the tea, adding, “I’ll pour.”

As the housekeeper left, she busied herself with the cups, her head turned away from the men in the room. But her hands were shaking, and her eyes were haunted in her drawn face.

Rutledge, his own face still as pale as his shirt, stood where he was, lost in the emotional storm that had swept him. Hamish, his voice harsh, was saying, “You canna’ be so foolish!”

Miss Trent handed a cup to the Vicar, who awkwardly looked around for a table to set it on, his eyes avoiding Rutledge’s. Monsignor Holston took his and sat down again behind the desk, rearranging papers lying on the blotter as if giving everyone a little time to recover. She brought a cup to Rutledge and said, “Drink it. Now, while it’s hot and sweet.”

He accepted the tea like a man sleepwalking, and seemed not to know what to do with it. After a moment, he drank it, hot as it was, and seemed to draw strength from it.

May Trent set aside her own cup and silently passed the slices of cake and the thin sandwiches-egg and ham and cheese-each a small white triangle of bread that seemed likely to choke them all.

It was ritual-and in ritual lay some normalcy. Each of the uncomfortable occupants in the quiet room accepted his role in this charade. And in the end, the tension in the air began to subside a little.

Monsignor Holston bit into an egg sandwich and swallowed it in a gulp.

Bruce the cat, who had slipped into the room with the housekeeper, came out from under the desk and stared impassively at the ham sandwich between Sims’s fingers, and the Vicar seemed to consider offering it to the animal. He couldn’t think why he’d accepted one in the first place, except out of politeness. His stomach was a twisted knot of despair. He didn’t want to hear any more; he’d had enough.

Miss Trent drank her tea in silence, and then said, “I can’t tell you whether or not Virginia Sedgwick was on the ship. I remember sailing, I vaguely recall dressing for the evening, although I can’t tell you what I chose to wear. I remember going to dinner, and faces and people speaking to me. A hodgepodge of images, unconnected in any way with me personally. It’s as if I don’t want to remember who lived and-and who died. It is such a terrible thing, to drown. I nearly did-someone hauled me into a boat, like a bundle of wet rags, and I was coughing and sick and so frightened I couldn’t speak. There were others in the water-” She gulped for air, as if drowning again, and said quickly, “No, I won’t go back there! ” She stopped and looked at the hearth, as if to find something new to pin her attention on. After a moment she continued, her voice uncertain. “Father James had worked with the wounded during the War. He told me that talking might help stop the pain and the dreams. But I’d buried it for so many long, difficult years. I’d reached a plateau of sorts, where I was someone else. People no longer remembered that I’d been on Titanic. When the War came, I was planning to be married and looking ahead to a future that would be happier than the past. But it was-I never told Roger about what had happened to me, I thought that if he didn’t know, I’d not see the reminder of my pain in his eyes, and be forced to look back. Someone else told him. A friend, who believed that Roger would want to know the truth and be better able to comfort me when the dreams were-worse than usual. That’s why I’m finishing his work. I had already decided to break the engagement, once he was safely home. But he never came home. And I carry that guilt, too.”

She looked from one to the other of the three men. “I didn’t know Father James had his own nightmare. I wasn’t much help to him, I’m afraid.” There was a faint quality of the child in her voice, begging forgiveness. “I didn’t understand how great his need was!”

Rutledge sat down heavily, trying to bring himself back to the task at hand. He wished that the Vicar and May Trent had taken the train, and he could drive back to Osterley-or anywhere-all alone. Except for Hamish, who never left him alone.

The Vicar said, into the silence, picking his words, “Virginia Sedgwick was a woman hungry for affection. I watched her-I was invited to several of the parties at Sedgwick Hall after she married Arthur. She believed her husband loved her. She most certainly loved him. But he was mad for racing; he lived in a world of fast machines and dangerous sport. As far as I could tell, he was oblivious to her dislike of living alone out in the middle of Yorkshire, where she had few neighbors and fewer friends. He expected her to find pleasure in running the house, as his mother had done-she was a well-known hostess, and quite clever at smoothing over her husband’s connections with trade. It never worked, their marriage. When I heard Virginia had left him and gone back to America, I was- glad it was over. I couldn’t bear to watch her suffer.”

Rutledge, grateful for the change in subject, asked, “You spoke of friends. Were there any close friends she confided in?”