He brushed the seat of his trousers. Criticism of others was a task demanding precision and calm. “I’ve no time for the woman myself. An ageing social flirt, if you ask my opinion. ‘No need to bow down to the old crow on my account,’ I told her. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I think I will. Just to see her squirm’.”
“Squirm? I don’t understand.”
“Apparently Marjorie was desperate to be invited to the Major’s homecoming.” He swivelled on his stool, spilling brandy on his trousers. “The woman’s quite besotted with him, you know. She even has embroidered a picture of him looking out over the sea like some latter-day Bonny Prince Charlie, though she keeps it well hidden. Isobel chanced upon it that morning all tucked away at the bottom of some needlework basket. We had a good laugh about that. Though she never said as much, Marjorie did not entirely approve of Isobel’s association with the Major.”
“And what did you think of it, Mr van Dielen?”
“I didn’t force the Major on her. Isobel would have liked him, whatever his nationality.”
“But for you, it must have been helpful.”
“Helpful?”
“For your business.”
“That was not the reason I allowed it. There would have been others who, had she shown interest, would have made it more helpful.”
“Like?”
Van Dielen gestured across the road.
“He was always inviting himself over. Isobel found him repulsive.”
“And you do not. If I remember our conversation correctly, you were quite vocal in your admiration.”
“We work well together.”
“Forgive me for saying so, but don’t you ever worry what will happen when they…”
“Lose?” Van Dielen’s voice was deliberately shrill. “No. When this is over my skills will be needed more than ever. If not here then some other, more ravaged quarter. There will be opportunity aplenty for the van Dielens to ply our trade.”
“You speak as if there were more than just you.”
“I always hoped that Isobel might find a husband who could come into the business, bear a son who would add further lustre to our endeavours.”
“And what did she think of such an idea?”
“I never told her. What would be the point? But it was always on the cards that she might meet someone who might have appreciated the firm’s potential. There used to be money here, Mr Luscombe, investors’ money, bankers’ money, waves of it washing in with the tide. In time I dare say there will be again.”
“An empire, then, is what you’re after?”
Van Dielen considered the idea for a moment. “The English Empire is exhausted, the German Empire stillborn and America has not sufficient moral backbone to engage in such an enterprise. Commerce, business, finance, these will be the new conquistadores, not nation states, but manufacturers, engineers. A construction company straddling Europe, Africa, building roads and bridges, towns and cities, employing thousands, its arms stretching to the furthest corners of the globe? Why not?”
“And you hoped Isobel would be part of your plan?”
“No. But she was good for the business, young, attractive, the daughter of a moderately wealthy and successful man. Clients liked coming to dinner when she was here.”
“Which is why you did not discourage her with the Major.”
“Perhaps.”
He starled to drink heavily again and the dark liquid sat on his lips and swam in his eyes.
“Ask me no more questions now. I have a daughter dead, Mr Luscombe, and I need to drink to that, to take it abroad this grey windswept isle and tell her mother that Isobel will soon be joining her. I have to tell her that and then listen to her curses rising from the ground. She never wanted to be here. Every day she would go down to the sea and swim out as far as she could. I asked her one day why. “I am trying to escape,” she said. I thought she was joking. She came here and she died here and now my daughter has followed in her footsteps. Leave me to my troubled peace, I implore you.”
“As soon as I am able, Mr van Dielen. It is just…”
“What?”
“I ought to search her room.”
Van Dielen waved him away. “Well, what’s keeping you. You know where it is, I believe.”
Ned was unable to move.
“Ach. You look so discomforted! Daughters write diaries, Mr Luscombe, diaries left in the imagined privacy of their bottom drawers. And suspicious fathers read them. You may well blush, for they were fulsome epistles. I was all for ending it there and then, if not on moral grounds then at least economie ones, but Marjorie told me to rest my peace, that by next season it would be all over. So I took her advice, the only time I believe that I have ever done so. Perhaps I should not have listened to her, after all. Go on with you, up to her room. I have matters to discuss with the Major as regards her burial.”
Her room had not changed: the long walnut fitted wardrobe that ran the length of one wall, the brightly coloured striped rug which had come from the Sudan, and in the middle of the narrow bed a pair of striped pyjamas folded neatly on the pillow. Next to the bedside table, overlooking the front road, stood the writing desk, replete with inkstand, gold-nibbed Conway Stewart fountain pen and matching light-blue stationery, with the initials vD embossed at the head. It was typical of the man that he should fly in the face of ridicule and be the proud Standard bearer of such socially unacceptable initials. Ned fingered the mark. Above the fresh sheet lay a slight tear of paper still attached to the gum. Must see you. Sunday morning, 11 o’clock. Usual place. Must see you. He took the note she had sent out of its envelope and smoothed it out over the notepad. It fitted perfectly; the last note she had written, then. But written when? When she had come back from Mrs Hallivand? With her father had knocking on her door?
Putting the letter back in his pocket he pulled open the drawer. More notepaper, more envelopes; a bottle of permanent black ink, a bottle of washable blue, a box of rubber bands, a tub of glue, a pencil, a green India rubber. No diary.
Ned opened the doors to the wardrobe. Below a shelf of hats and scarves ran a long rack of clothes. Though he had seen them before, indeed had been surprised when out of their folds Isobel had sprung once, dressed in a lion’s costume taken from the amateur dramatics, throwing a great flurry of muslin over his head before pushing him down onto the bed, her growls turning to giggles, he had never appreciated how many different outfits she possessed: loose summer skirts, tweedy winter ones; demure frocks for church, patterned frocks for gardens, bold frocks for parties; a black cocktail dress that seemed to have a loose body already shimmering inside; cord trousers; wool jackets; and finally a blue satin ball gown with a sequinned bow and a ready-made bust jutting out. He never seen so many clothes gathered together in one place except in a shop, and that was what they looked like here, the contents of some mainland fashion store, with matching shoes and boots ranged underneath. It was only now that he understood the requirements of Isobel’s position, and her natural and disguised vanity. He had only seen her wearing one or two things, the inevitable hacking jacket with the flapping back and tight buttons, the loose cord trousers with those deep, erotic pockets into which, standing behind her, he used to ease his hands, the white blouse, the white ribbed jumper, the green skirt she favoured, with buttons at the front. He pushed the clothes back and forth on their hangers. For the most part they looked unused. It had never struck him before what a woman of substance might imagine she needed, what she might come back from town with, hang in her wardrobe and not wear. Isobel had never seemed interested in clothes, and yet here were all these, racked up for future, unplayed games. His mother had, what, two good dresses to his knowledge, one for church, one for best outings, and after that, in the top two drawers of his parents’ chest of drawers, lay the skirts and blouses which, like the days of the week, came out in strict rotation. He had never supposed that his mother had given a moment’s thought to what she wore, and Isobel too had appeared to harbour the same indifference. Yet one had been conceived on the bed of necessity, the other inherited through the flirtatious pleasure born of wealth. When his mother was young, had she ever wanted dresses such as these? And did she, even now? It was hard for him to imagine it.