Barbara Vine - The Minotaur

8

We went into Isabel's living room and she poured white wine into two glasses. Of course she wanted to know how I was getting on with the Cosways and I soon saw that she looked on them with very different eyes from mine. I was her brother-in-law's girlfriend but they were her friends, if distant ones by this time, and I knew I must be careful not to criticize.

‘Mrs Cosway was quite nice to me when I used to go there and stay. The village is pretty too, don't you think? Of course the house is strange, especially in the summer. There used to be a picture in the library of the old house as it was before their great-grandfather put a new facade on it and planted all that creeper. As you know, I haven't been there for ages, it must be ten years, but I don't suppose it's changed much.’

‘Maybe not,’ I said.

‘My own father was very strict and I remember when I was a child I used to wish Mr Cosway was my father. He was so nice . He always had time for the children, answered all their questions, really spent time with them, and he was patient. John becoming – well, mentally ill was something he could never quite accept.’

‘Do you mean he wasn't always?’

‘It seems he was quite normal when he was a little boy but something went wrong with his brain after he had some kind of a shock. Or that's what Zorah said. I don't know what it was and of course I couldn't ask. He began to have terrible tantrums and there was no doing anything with him. That was when he started hiding in cupboards and spending all day in the library. Mr Cosway was one of those men who valued his son over any daughter and I'm afraid he thought the only career for a woman, the only happy way of life really, was marriage. But none of his girls looked like marrying. Ida got engaged to someone and that was a relief to him, but it was broken off soon after he died.’

‘He would have been in for disappointment,’ I said. ‘Ida and Ella both without husbands and Zorah a widow.’

‘Why didn't you include Winifred?’

‘Oh, didn't you know? Winifred's engaged. To a man called Eric Dawson. He's the Rector of Windrose.’

Isabel laughed but in kindly fashion. ‘How like Winifred. Still, I'm glad. She'll make an excellent vicar's wife – rector's, I should say. Shall we go and have lunch?’

At this meal, a light and delicate change from the heavy food served up at Lydstep, we talked about Isabel's husband, a civil servant in the Foreign Office, and their children, both at school that day. Unless they had both changed a lot, I found it hard to imagine Isabel and Zorah as friends, they were so different. We called people like Zorah ‘jet-setters' in those days, sophisticated, smart, dashing and superficial, while Isabel was gentle and warm. You could hardly have found women who were contemporaries and of the same ethnic group who looked less alike, Zorah thin and model-ish, her black hair so geometrically cut that it looked painted on, Isabel plump and fair, the type then called an English rose.

Keeping off the subject of the Cosways was impossible for me for long. When Isabel brought us coffee I asked her when she had last seen Zorah. Surely since the ten years she had mentioned.

‘Well, we both live in London but there's a bit of a difference, isn't there? I mean, here am I in Crouch End and her house is in Green Street.’

‘You mean, the Green Street in the West End? In Mayfair?’

She laughed at the expression on my face. ‘I do mean that, yes. Zorah is very very rich, you know. I see you didn't know. But we do meet sometimes. Having the children makes it difficult for me. I suppose the last time was two years ago when we had lunch. She phones and Mrs Cosway writes – as you know.’

I said bluntly, ‘How rich?’

‘Oh, millionaire class. I'd better tell you the story. It's quite romantic in its way.’

‘Yes, please.’

‘She was very plain when she was in her teens. Huge nose and quite swarthy but awfully bright. I mean, streets ahead of anyone else in the family, not a bit like them really. I told you Mr Cosway had these antediluvian ideas. He thought you only bothered to educate plain girls because they'd need to earn their own livings. They wouldn't get married, you see. Zorah got a scholarship to Oxford. Everyone thought he wouldn't let her go but he did because he thought it was her only hope. Besides, he wanted to get her out of his sight, he'd never loved her like he did the others.’

‘He was nice?’ I said, and breaking my rule, ‘He doesn't sound it.’

‘He was of his time. Very much a Victorian. After all, he was born in the 1880s. Anyway, Zorah got a first and started on a DPhil. I got the impression the others were bewildered by her brains. This would have been some time in the late fifties. She was doing research in some obscure library which was expecting a visit from a millionaire they hoped would endow something or other. I mean, really big money was involved and Zorah was asked to show him round and look after him for the day. The next thing was he wanted to see her again and within a couple of months they were married.’

‘So much for Mr Cosway's estimate of her.’

‘Yes,’ Isabel said. ‘You could put it like that. Raymond Todd had been married three times before and been three times divorced. The Cosways found that very hard to take but Zorah was determined to marry him and she was of age, she was twenty-four by then.’

I asked her how old Raymond Todd was.

‘Getting on for sixty. He had a house in Italy and an apartment in New York and this house in Green Street. She'd been married maybe six months when Mr Cosway died. He left a funny sort of will. I don't remember the ins and outs of it, if I ever knew, but I do know that John got everything. Mrs Cosway has a small annuity but none of the rest of them have any money except what Ella earns and Winifred makes cooking for people and, of course, what Zorah gives them. She's been amazing – I mean, very, very generous.’

‘Is that why she spends so much time there? She's got those houses and so on, yet she apparently spends weeks at Lydstep. I've wondered why but perhaps it's so that she can be on hand to help them.’

‘Perhaps.’ Isabel looked dubious. ‘I suppose she likes it.’

That mystery remained unsolved, as far as I was concerned. It seemed to me that Zorah could have given her family financial support just as well from London, or Italy, come to that, as from a bedroom in her mother's house. I asked when her husband died.

‘Oh, not long after Mr Cosway. He left Zorah all he had. He had no children from any of his marriages, you see, so she got the lot.’ Isabel laughed. ‘Do you know the first thing she did? She had her nose done.’

‘Plastic surgery, d'you mean?’

‘Absolutely. She's got a neat little nose now. You have a look at it next time you see her.’

‘I wish you could remember,’ I said, ‘the details of Mr Cosway's will.’

‘I don't think it's a matter of remembering. I don't think I ever knew.’

‘Perhaps he didn't have much money,’ I said, ‘but he had the house.’

‘And the land. Don't forget that. Several hundred acres and it's all let out to farmers. Besides, I think there was quite a lot of money. He was a stockbroker, you know, and doing very well after the war, my mother said. She said John's trouble was a shocking blow to him. He adored John, he was enormously proud of him, because he was clever, you know, in a curious sort of way, but he sort of couldn't realize his intelligence, if you understand what I mean. It was there, he'd do algebra puzzles and that sort of thing, but he couldn't put it to practical use.’

‘What exactly was he like when you knew him?’ I asked her.

She considered. ‘There was always something peculiar about him. He never seemed to have any feelings for people and he was totally undemonstrative, hated to be touched, for instance. I saw some relative, an aunt I think it was, try to kiss him and he just screamed out loud. His own family knew better than to try that. There were all sorts of other things he did, like hiding and doing violent things, breaking things, throwing them around. I was last there for Zorah's wedding ten years ago. Eleven actually by now.’