Andrew Taylor - Bleeding Heart Square

‘What have you told Fin?’

‘Nothing. Yet.’

‘I’d hate to see him worried by something like this.’

‘In that case you’ll make sure he isn’t.’

‘Will you stay with your father?’

Lydia stood up, walked over to the window again and looked down at the trim self-confident street below. She turned her head and stared at her mother. She felt cruelty rising inside her, a black tide. ‘That rather depends on who you mean by my father.’

Julian Dawlish looked as if he hadn’t slept. He arrived as arranged a little after ten o’clock. He brought with him milk, tea, bread and bacon. Rory cooked them a primitive breakfast, which they ate at the kitchen table.

Afterwards, Dawlish pushed aside his plate, cleared his throat and said, ‘Fenella rang me up this morning. It seems that she doesn’t want the job after all. Or the flat.’ He looked like a man who has seen his own ghost.

‘I’m sorry,’ Rory said, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

‘Of course I shall carry on with the association. It’s — it’s important, as I’m sure you agree after what we saw on Saturday. One has to start somewhere, doesn’t one? Because otherwise everything falls to pieces and one might as well just lie down and wait for the worst to happen.’

‘Yes, one has to do something.’ Rory wasn’t sure whether his host was talking about the state of his own emotions or Fascism’s steady invasion of European politics. ‘Anything’s better than nothing.’

‘Precisely,’ Dawlish said, looking even more hag-ridden than before. He took out his case and lit a cigarette. ‘I–I hope she’s all right. Fenella, I mean. She seemed a bit — well, jumpy yesterday. I don’t know whether you noticed?’

‘I did notice something,’ Rory admitted.

There was a pause in the conversation while Dawlish stubbed out the cigarette. Then he asked Rory how he was feeling.

‘Much better, thanks. I’ll walk back to Bleeding Heart Square when we’re done here and start packing.’

‘Nonsense. I’ll run you over in the car. Then I’ll take your piece over to Berkeley’s and have a word with the editor.’

‘That’s awfully kind.’

Dawlish glanced at him and smiled a little awkwardly. ‘How long will it take you to pack your gear when you get back there?’

‘I don’t know — an hour or two at most, I should think.’

Dawlish looked at his watch. ‘Suppose I pick you up after lunch. Half past two, say, will that suit?’

‘Absolutely. Thank you.’

‘You might as well have this flat for the time being. I’ll get someone in to sort out the attic.’

‘We must talk about rent and so on.’

‘Oh yes,’ Dawlish said. ‘We shall. The association won’t need the whole house, after all. The ground floor and the first floor will be more than enough.’

‘I shouldn’t be surprised if Lydia Langstone wasn’t soon looking for somewhere to live.’

‘Women are queer fish,’ Dawlish went on, as if Rory had said something quite different. ‘That’s all there is to it. Kittle-cattle, as my father used to say. Don’t you agree?’

Lady Cassington sat at her dressing table, looking at Lydia’s reflection in the oval mirror. She was wearing a pale green wrap with lace at the sleeves and the collar. Her feet were bare and the hand holding the hairbrush was trembling slightly. The skin at the base of her neck, Lydia saw, was puffy and wrinkled.

‘I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,’ Lady Cassington said carefully and slowly. She had just returned from a tactical retreat to her bathroom, where no doubt she had considered her possible courses of action.

‘You know perfectly well,’ Lydia said. ‘If necessary, by the way, I shall make this public too.’

‘Lydia! Of all the wicked-’

‘I shouldn’t have found out if it hadn’t been for you,’ Lydia said. ‘It was you who got the Alfordes to ask me to tea. Mrs Alforde is a nice woman. She tried so hard to do the right thing. She even asked me out for a day in the country. She had to run down to Rawling, you see. There was a funeral she had to go to — a man called Narton, the husband of an old servant.’

‘My dear Lydia,’ her mother said, veering on to another tack, ‘on reflection, I think you’re right about you and Marcus. About the divorce, I mean. Sometimes one has to draw a line under things, and make the best of a bad business. Sometimes-’

‘We had lunch at the Vicarage after the funeral,’ Lydia interrupted. ‘Mrs Alforde and the Vicar put their heads together about the best way to help Mrs Narton. You must have seen Mrs Narton yourself when you went to stay at Rawling Hall. She looks about seventy now, but in fact she’s only forty-five. Did you know that?’

‘Of course I didn’t,’ Lady Cassington snapped. ‘Why on earth would I know a thing like that?’

Lydia sat down on the window seat. Her mother swivelled in her chair to keep her in sight.

‘Mrs Alforde went to see Mrs Narton that afternoon,’ Lydia said. ‘They had a very long chat. The funny thing was, after she’d come back from seeing Mrs Narton, Mrs Alforde was completely different. She acted very strangely. In fact she was almost unfriendly towards me.’

‘I shouldn’t pay too much attention to that sort of thing, dear. I expect Hermione was upset by seeing what a state Mrs Narton was in. Or even by going back to Rawling. It was quite a comedown for the Alfordes, you know, having to give up the Hall. Gerry’s uncle lived very comfortably. Hermione must have thought that one day-’

‘It wasn’t that,’ Lydia said. ‘I know that because on Saturday afternoon Mrs Alforde turned up at Bleeding Heart Square. She and the Captain put their heads together and decided that I had to go and live with the Alfordes.’

‘I call that a very generous offer, dear,’ Lady Cassington said. ‘She has a very kind heart, I’ve always said that.’

‘But they wouldn’t tell me why.’

‘It speaks for itself, surely.’

Lydia laughed. ‘That depends what you think it says. It seemed to me that something must have happened. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it must have been something on Thursday afternoon at Rawling, when Mrs Alforde went to see Mrs Narton. So I went and asked her. Asked Mrs Narton, I mean.’

Her mother sighed but said nothing.

‘She was in quite a state,’ Lydia went on. ‘Did I mention that they think Mr Narton shot himself? That must have made it even worse for her, mustn’t it?’

‘Did he leave a note?’

‘Yes, but Mrs Narton burned it. No one else saw it.’

‘How very wrong of her,’ Lady Cassington said.

‘When she was a girl, Serridge seduced her. She was very young — she had just gone into service at Rawling Hall.’ Lydia paused, watching her mother. ‘Serridge told Mr Narton about it just before he killed himself. He didn’t know, you see. Serridge told Narton that he had seduced his wife as well as his daughter. That’s what the note said.’

‘It seems very strange Mrs Narton should tell you . She’s never even met you.’

‘She knew who I was, even so. She said she’d known who I was as soon as she saw me at the funeral. She said it was something about the eyes and the shape of the mouth. And then she asked Mrs Alforde, just to make sure.’

‘Good Lord,’ her mother said. ‘I’ve always said you and I are quite alike from some angles. Something to do with the cheekbones, perhaps. But it’s funny to think of a servant remembering me after all those years.’

‘Almost exactly thirty years. It was the Christmas of 1904. Serridge had been hired as a beater for the shooting. You can guess who recommended him for the job. And he was enjoying himself with Mrs Narton, not that she was married then, of course. But then he got more interested in one of the guests at the Hall, a schoolgirl. Mrs Narton said she was a scrap of a thing but very pretty and very keen on Serridge. That was it as far as Mrs Narton was concerned. He just dropped her. Naturally she was jealous, and used to watch him like a hawk when she could. And the girl. So she wasn’t surprised when she heard the girl was pregnant. Serve her right, she said. But of course the family covered it up. They married the girl off to Mrs Alforde’s nephew, the Captain. So that’s why something about my face reminded Margaret Narton of Joseph Serridge when he was a young man.’