‘Cara,’ I whispered, then went on even more quietly as Donald flinched and resettled, ‘I promise you. I promise.’ I did not need to speak the promise, not to someone who was in my head and orchestrating my dreams, but it was no less sincere for that.
There was no instant clarity, however, just because I had let go of my resistance. As to what exactly Lena had done to kill her child I did not know and could not bear to speculate. And as for why, I had no idea where to start. There was so much of it all and it made no sense, as though more than one story in loose leaf had got shuffled in together and I was reading now a page from this, now a page from that, never knowing where the join should be. I needed help.
Brightly, at breakfast the next morning – the children breakfast with us in the holidays, at least to start with until all parties tire of it – I announced to the boys, and hence indirectly to Hugh as well, that we were to have a visitor.
‘His name is Alec Osborne and he’s a friend of Daddy’s and mine, but younger. He has had a rotten time lately and he needs a quiet break in the country with his friends.’
Donald groaned and said with what I hope was affected weariness, for it would not be pleasant to think that one’s eleven-year-old boy was really that jaded: ‘Not another shell shock case, surely, Mother. That was years ago.’
Hugh’s eyes bulged but he said nothing.
‘No, dear,’ I replied calmly, understanding what Hugh refused to understand, that there was no way we could hope to explain to the boys anything about the true nature of the war. They had lived through it but they had been so well protected that they still viewed it as a game; one which had unfairly finished before they were old enough to play and which had left behind it only its most dreary components – the wounded, the money worries and indeed the shell shock cases. What Hugh and I did share, I am sure, was a fervent wish masquerading as a conviction that at least we should never see its like again and they had missed it for once and all.
‘He was to be married,’ I went on. ‘But there was a dreadful fire and the girl died in it.’ Donald’s and Teddy’s eyes grew round with delight. ‘So you see he is very sad and needs to be jollied up with games and expeditions.’ I hoped by this to fix their interest on the possibility of a more exciting companion than either Hugh or me. I failed, of course.
‘A fire! Gosh, Mummy, did he try to save her and get beaten back by the flames?’
‘And have to listen to her gurgling screams while she -’
‘No!’ I said, almost shouting. ‘Where do you get this? Gurgling screams indeed. You are forbidden to mention it to him, do you hear?’ This seemed to diminish Alec’s value rather severely and both boys pulled wry faces and went back to gobbling.
Still, Hugh had been informed of the visit and had not made a murmur, so now my only task was to summon Alec, but I was not quite sure exactly where he was. He had gone to the Duffys’ after their return from the Alps, had been staying with them at the time of the memorial service, but he was not there now, none of them feeling equal to the situation. Had their estate been open he might have skulked there inconspicuously for weeks until the relationship faded, but I quite saw how neither he nor the family could bear his presence in the narrow confines of the Edinburgh house, with wedding presents still arriving and having to be sent back, and visits of condolence being paid. Perhaps he had returned to Dorset.
My telephone was ringing as Bunty and I came back into the house after our morning walk and although I broke into a lope to reach it I was still only halfway across the breakfast room when Pallister disappeared through my door with a withering look at me over his shoulder. He was holding out the earpiece towards me when I caught up with him and spoke in a chilly voice even by his standards.
‘A young gentleman, madam.’ This of course was exactly what Pallister feared a private telephone was for and it was hard to say whether distaste or pity was the chief ingredient in his expression as he withdrew. Little I cared.
‘Dandy?’ said Alec’s voice, and despite everything my heart lifted a bit.
‘Alec, I need to speak to you most seriously,’ I began, shrugging off my coat and pointing Bunty fiercely towards her rug.
‘Yes, but since I telephoned to you, dear,’ said Alec in his most amused drawl, ‘I’m afraid you shall have to wait.’ I heard the click of him resettling his pipe and waited for him to go on. This appearance of such extreme relaxation had to be a deliberate act, for if it were not why had he rung me?
‘I have had the most peculiar interview with old Cousin Gregory,’ Alec said. ‘Last evening in his library. I was invited, not for dinner but to come and see him at ten o’clock and was bundled in and upstairs like a chorus girl being brought to a stag party. Then we had a long talk about Cara.’ Alec must have heard me catch my breath and correctly interpreting my interest he dispelled it immediately. ‘Nothing to the point of our investigation, Dandy, just generally, you know. I think the poor old boy can’t be getting much of a chance to talk about her. Lena’s act of “grief to the point of distraction” is still going strong. And as you know he has no time for Clemence, so I daresay he’s just had to bottle it. He looks ten years older.’
‘And?’ I said, beginning to feel disappointed. ‘Would you like me to visit and “draw him out”?’
‘Stop interrupting,’ said Alec. ‘I’m getting to something important. Two things, actually, and I hardly know which is more startling. First thing: Gregory wanted to assure me that I was to remain his heir. That in itself I’m sure you will agree is nothing, but he was vociferous on the topic of my marrying Clemence.’
‘What?’ I said, before I could help myself. ‘Alec, are you…?’ I had been going to say ‘mad’, but bit my lip just in time. Clemence? Clemence knew. She at least knew something. I was sure she did. ‘Are you to be a Mr Collins after all then?’ I finished lamely.
‘Concentrate, Dandy, please,’ he said, and his tone told me that at least I had managed to conceal the extent of my fright. ‘Cousin Gregory, talking around and around, and never quite saying it exactly or even hinting at why, has let me know that if I marry Clemence I am to be disinherited and the estate will pass to another branch of the family entirely. Now what do you make of that?’
‘He knows something,’ I said. ‘He must know that Clemence was bound up with Cara’s death. But why on earth…? Have we got it wrong, then? Is it all Clemence and nothing to do with Lena after all? Because why should Mr Duffy be so down on Clemence alone?’
‘That brings me to the second item,’ said Alec. ‘He’s not concentrating on Clemence. Far from it. He told me that he is going to divorce his wife.’
I was speechless, my mind racing but failing to find a thought to grasp and hold.
‘He is divorcing Lena,’ Alec went on, ‘settling the Canadian property on Clemence, who we can only assume is to be packed off there, and handing the estates over to me.’
It is to my shame that what should have been the least important of these points, that Alec might be coming to live on the Duffys’ Perthshire estate after all, lodged in my mind as firmly as all the others.
‘How can he divorce her?’ I said. ‘You mean he is to let her divorce him?’ Even that was a ludicrous notion. Mr Duffy, stiff, proper and sixty-five, allowing himself to be photographed at an hotel with a girl hired for the purpose. But Alec was adamant.
‘He can’t just cast her off with no grounds,’ I said.
‘He has grounds,’ said Alec. ‘“I will have no trouble producing grounds” were his exact words, and you’ve no idea how grim he looked when he said it.’