The War Widow Read online

  Jim Bristol was absolutely dumbfounded and he told me so.

  I jerked my head. “You heard what I said,” I snapped, reaching and failing for any kind of calm. “Give it back.”

  He stirred uncomfortably, sitting straighter on his chair and eyes working right and left. An excellent display of embarrassed discomfort, it seemed to me. A disbelieving smile came and went on that supple mouth and finally he settled on giving a little nervous laugh. “Excuse me?”

  “I want it back. Now.”

  That perfect bewilderment faltered. Now I saw the grit beneath. “I haven’t taken your sketchbook. I haven’t seen it; in fact I don’t even know what it looks like. The closest I’ve come to it was today when you were sitting painting on that wall. You know that.” He sounded both injured and increasingly exasperated, and it was brilliantly done. What was worse was that what he said was perfectly true.

  A shocked hush possessed the room and, standing there on the dismal island of the lounge carpet, I felt the ludicrousness of my stance. My conviction didn’t slip but my sense of fight did. I knew that somewhere beyond the row that housed the Miss Bartlemans, Mrs Alderton was smirking. Low on his settee against the wall, Jim added sternly, “What on earth should I want with your notebook anyway?”

  “It’s a sketchbook.”

  My retort amused him for a fleeting second. “Very well, Miss Ward. What should I want with this sketchbook?”

  “Perhaps you left it somewhere,” suggested Mrs Alderton helpfully. “Perhaps it’s in the car; or on the side of a mountain? You did go on this trip to the castle today, didn’t you?”

  She had the most extraordinary way of putting it so that she sounded like she was scoring a point off my participation in Adam and Mary’s day. I shook my head, not in denial but in order to retain my grip upon the one fact I could prove.

  “I didn’t leave it anywhere,” I repeated weakly. I had to put my bag down before I dropped it. There was a low coffee table somewhere nearby. It stood at the end of the row that housed the Miss Bartlemans. I put out my hand in its general direction. A very small part of my mind noticed that Mary was kind enough to reach past the old ladies to intercept the bag before it fell with a clatter. I was already saying with weakening force, “I had it earlier, I know I did. Jim, please – I don’t know why they think they want it but that doesn’t matter; it really doesn’t. Just give it back to me. Please.”

  I saw a deeper kind of assessment strike his face. Colder, somehow more real. “But I—” Then it was swept away and his gaze flicked with relief over my shoulder. “Ah, here he is.”

  My heart changed rhythm so abruptly it hurt. Someone had stepped into the room from the bright stairwell behind me. I jerked round. Then the information penetrated that it was Adam and Adam alone and the release made my brain ache with a different kind of tension. Suddenly I knew this was not going to work. I’d made a mistake. I don’t know in what deluded world I had expected any good to come from confrontation. It never had in the past. And now it was too late to stop it.

  Jim’s voice was already adding patiently from behind, “Perhaps he can tell you if you left it in the car.”

  Adam stopped dead about a stride away from me. He’d been about to pass me on the way to quietly claiming his usual chair. I saw the tension in the room hit him as he realised he’d walked into something unpleasant. His brows lifted as his gaze ran from me to Jim and back again to my pale and agitated face. “If she left what in my car?” His look was a question for me. I could feel the stain of my recent fury marking my face, only it was fading now to something like a sense of impending doom. On his face was surprise, discomfort and a slow dawning of faintly irritated resignation.

  I said in a hushed undertone just for him, “I wish you hadn’t come—”

  “Her sketchbook.” This was Mrs Alderton. “She’s accusing poor Mr Bristol here of stealing it, but if you’ll just tell us that she’s left it in the car, we can all go back to enjoying what remains of our evening. Have you eaten, by the way?”

  Adam’s eyes didn’t leave my face as he answered to say that he’d eaten fish and chips by the harbour. There was no warmth in his manner and I knew why. For the second time in two days he was about to find himself being required to abandon his hopes of a peaceful evening for the sake of saving mine, and in front of people who were delighted to scrutinise his every step.

  Sudden revulsion that had nothing to do with the loss of my sketchbook made me sharply take a step away. The coffee table met the backs of my calves and I abruptly sat down. It hurt but at least we didn’t need to stand united before this crowd.

  He hadn’t noticed my retreat. For him nothing had changed. Everyone was still staring at him, expecting him to somehow wade in and resolve this as if he were my keeper. I rivalled him for irritation. This shamed me too. Propping myself up with one hand fiercely gripping the edge of the table I twisted awkwardly about to snap angrily at the room, “Don’t involve him. He hasn’t got a part in this.”

  Nobody listened. They were still waiting for Adam. I thought he spoke with remarkable self-possession. “No, I didn’t see anything in my car?”

  It was meant as a question for me. I looked up at him. I had to calm my growing outrage and tell him in a stiff little voice, “Jim’s taken it. I know he has. But that doesn’t mean that you should—”

  He didn’t listen, or rather he did listen but not to the right bit. I don’t think my hints that he should distance himself from me were being taken in quite the right way. I think it was with a certain degree of resentment – and perhaps decency since technically Adam was at least going through the motions of defending me – that he turned his attention to the low settee beyond me. He asked Jim, “Is this true? Have you?”

  I don’t think Jim realised this battle was already won. Jim hadn’t seen as I had, painfully, the moment that comprehension worked to its natural conclusion in the mind behind Adam’s eyes. I’d known this was how it would end from the very moment that Adam stepped into the room but still defeat hit hard. This was the consequence of daring to admit my tendency towards paranoia. I’d told him that I was suffering from imaginary alarms and in the next breath murmured something about distrusting Jim; and promptly gifted Adam the perfect reason to disbelieve everything I said.

  But Jim didn’t know any of that and the question made Jim finally lose his temper. He gave an exasperated cry. “Of course I haven’t got her book! What kind of ludicrous idea is that?”

  I too lost my temper then. The impotence of it all – powerless to bully him into a confession, powerless to take back the accusation now, powerless to make them all leave Adam alone – it all made me abandon what good sense I might have once had. I twisted upon the tabletop and rounded on Jim and my voice cracked sharply as I snarled, “You know full well how I got that idea, Mr Jim Bristol. Even if you have convinced everyone else that your story is true, you’ll never get me. I’ll give you some advice if I may – if you’re going to follow someone, I’d suggest that you don’t wear such a conspicuous coat!”

  Jim gaped. In fact the whole room gaped. He paled a little before blinking mutely and developing a very unattractive hint of red. His hands worked across the panels of that expensive burgundy jacket for a moment and my accusation seemed to have robbed him of all his poise. I was breathing hard. I shouldn’t have said it. I knew I shouldn’t have said it. Then a woman’s voice rose gently from the floor beyond my little table.

  “Um, Katie?”

  It took my body a few seconds to trace an awkward twist round further to find my bag opened on the floor and my possessions spread around for all to see. Mary was kneeling there, barely inches away from my table, perhaps a yard more from her sister’s seat and no more than two yards from Jim’s. A stack of receipts stood neatly to one side and a pile of brushes and pencils lay in her lap. And reaching over Mary’s shoulder was Mrs Alderton’s hand. Clasped within those fingers and looking perfectly innocent as she lifted it from the pile, was
a very tatty leather-bound notebook. My sketchbook.

  Disbelief hit me in a punch to the body. The triumph in Mrs Alderton’s face was palpably different from the one that had gone before but it was nothing to the sudden rush of doubt within.

  The cruelty of it robbed me of my breath. It was harsh to go from drawing rapid gasps to absolute stillness. I sat like a statue. A rigid, beaten statue, fingers gripping the edge of the tabletop.

  Mary was carefully packing my things away. Then, without meeting my eyes, she handed me both the book and the bag.

  “There,” said Mrs Alderton, settling back in her chair and dusting off her hands with very evident satisfaction. “Mystery solved. Case closed. It was never missing at all. Perhaps now the lady can put aside her unnecessary histrionics and leave perfectly innocent guests to enjoy their coffee in peace?”

  I sagged. But every muscle bolted when a hand suddenly met and gripped my elbow and drew me to my feet.

  There was a laden hush as all eyes stared at me. Now I think I was expected to say something. I wet my lips. I might have given way to the maniacal laughter that waited in the wings but that, with an odd little sigh, Adam confirmed his responsibility for me in the eyes of everyone in that room, and steered me by the arm to the door and out into the foyer. He piloted me like I was a feeble wreck on the verge of collapse.

  I wasn’t on the verge of collapse. I revived when we reached the foot of the stairs. I snatched my elbow from his grip and snapped icily, “I can escort myself to my room, thank you very much.”

  He was still with me when we reached my bedroom door. I think he meant to take my key from me when I fumbled for the lock but I shook his hand away that time too and snarled, “And I can manage to unlock my own door.”

  He didn’t leave. Instead he leaned a shoulder against the wall by the doorframe and quietly picked up my handbag and held it for me when my clumsy fingers dropped it. I resisted the urge to ask him whether he too wished to raid its depths for my sketchbook.

  There was a creak of hinges as my hand pushed open the bedroom door. I glanced at him then. He was leaning there, watching my face and trying not to smile at my childishness. It came as a shock because I had been bracing to meet some sort of reprimand for ruining his trip in pretty much every way I could. Admittedly, he’d been trying to look severe I think. Only instead here was a little slip into the kind of understanding that had formed between us before. I’d been about to concede a sheepish little smile myself but the thought stopped it dead. I couldn’t cope with this.

  He saw the emotional hatches batten down. The price of my decision was that it made him suddenly consider whether the incident had been more serious than he had thought. That faint curve of his lips hardened. His chin lifted defiantly and he spoke curtly as he told me, “You’ve had quite a time, haven’t you? First me, and now Jim. Are you going to accuse all the guests in turn do you think?”

  “My sketchbook was missing.”

  “So does that make it Mary’s turn next?”

  With a little flinch because it was probably the truth, I snatched my bag from his hand and stepped quickly into my room. I turned, meaning to swiftly shut the door but something curbed my flight. I couldn’t quite bring myself to look at him so I fixed my gaze resolutely on the faded burgundy carpet by his feet. Long use had very nearly turned it green. “No,” I said stiffly. “I think I’ve embarrassed myself quite enough in front of strangers, thank you.”

  “Kate …”

  He didn’t like to be numbered amongst the strangers. The murmur of my name was a barrage of reasonableness when it would have been easier if he had been sharp. It jerked my head up but I still couldn’t look at him. The edge of the open door was cool against the palm of my hand. I touched my forehead to it, briefly, for a matter of seconds and no more.

  Finally I drew enough strength from it to say uselessly, “I still don’t trust Jim.”

  “Nor me, by all accounts,” remarked Adam lightly, straightening from his lean against the doorframe. “And yet, when have you ever been right?”

  This, then, was the real reproof. He stood there in the corridor before me. He wasn’t barring the door but he was certainly willing me to meet his gaze. I did and I felt my heart lurch again as I fully realised my loneliness. Amusement and anger had both gone from his eyes to be replaced by something altogether more gentle.

  I had been fearing this. A different kind of agony nudged its way into the scene. There was that impulse to tell him everything. There was more than a hint here that he thought I should. Again I had to wrestle with the knowledge that any concession on my part would soon be followed by layer upon layer of blame for not saying the sort of truths he wanted to hear.

  I couldn’t bear it, this constant working upon my self-belief; not by him. The only hope was to sever this connection with all of them. With a very great effort, survival triumphed over every other normal civilised feeling and I succeeded in keeping my voice steady as I managed a very conservative, “I’m sorry.”

  It wasn’t remotely what he wanted from me. For the first time I sensed the steel in him. “Kate, please. I have to say—”

  I had to interrupt him. I said exhaustedly, with finality, “Goodnight, Adam.”

  It checked him. He saw my desolation, my decision. He bit off whatever fresh claim he had been about to make upon either my conscience or my self-respect and with an effort limited himself to giving an understanding nod. “Goodnight,” he said. I saw him step backwards from my door, giving me leave to close it. Then he said, “Sweet dreams.” And he meant it.

  I shut the door gently. I shut out the day and him, and permanently ended my association with both, I thought. But I should have known that this latest disaster hadn’t finished its work on me yet.

  Chapter 10

  What sleep I got that night was disturbed and even more fitful than normal to the point that at about one o’clock in the morning I actually developed the fevered conviction that my coffee had been drugged. I was not drugged, of course, it was just the effects of a stimulant on an already overwrought mind but all the same, the much revisited flight across tumbling rivers was wild and terrifying and long before sunrise I woke with a kick, convinced that he had been in my room. Not Rhys or Jim or Adam or those two unnamed ever-present dangers, but someone whose appearance in my dreams drew on far older stresses, from the days of my marriage. The man was Gregory; Rhys’s old friend and patron.

  Sweating, sickened, I slipped out of bed towards the window and the salvation of fresher air. Once there, my breath began to come a little easier, my stomach churned a little less. Someone was snoring next door. There was a creak of bedsprings as they turned over and then peace once more while I watched pigeons roosting on the bizarrely truncated ladder that was bolted to the wall beside me.

  Breakfast, when at long last it came, was about as near to tranquil isolation as I could have wished. I was early – it was before eight o’clock – and I only had to share the room with the serving girl and the Miss Bartlemans who were racing to make their meeting with their friends. I was calm, collected, detached. Today the two sisters occupied themselves by discussing the sea fret that had rolled in with the tide and it was only as I was contemplating the dregs of my last cup of tea that I noticed the other discussion unfolding in the distance.

  Mrs Alderton was delivering a fresh lecture. The door into the foyer was wide open so it was easy to catch her tone even if not all the words. From her pitch it was possible to discern the moment that a male guest joined them at the foot of the stairs and from the lack of enthusiasm establish that he wasn’t the particular male Mrs Alderton wanted.

  It was my cue to make my exit. I began gathering my things but just as I was finishing that last sip of tea in readiness, I was startled into full consciousness by a cross whisper from one elderly Miss Bartleman to the other:

  “Well I don’t care one jot whether she’s married or divorced or whatever. Even after that upset last night, she still painted
us the most exquisite little card.”

  “It had heather on it,” remarked her sister.

  “And mountains. And a dear little sheep.”

  That was the moment that I realised Mrs Alderton was now talking about me. Or, to be specific, her discovery of my status as a divorcee.

  It must be said that I didn’t really mind. If I had cared to keep my marital status secret, I would hardly have told Mary. And after all, even discounting last night’s scene, I had given Mrs Alderton plenty of legitimate reasons to dislike me in the long two days of my stay and this discovery probably sealed it. I even managed to not mind that Mrs Alderton was now treating this news as her own private discovery. She was not the first woman of my acquaintance to distrust divorcees in general. In men, the lapse was deemed barely forgivable. In women, predictably, our uncertain social standing was a signpost for moral corruption.

  I rose to my feet as Jim enquired after the arrival of the day’s papers. His light question to the lady at reception was drowned out by Mrs Alderton’s idea of a brittle whisper: “I do think, Mary, after all the turmoil of our recent war it has become all the more vital that we rebuild stronger family values. One’s vows are made to be held, not just abandoned at the drop of a hat. And divorcees always lie about it too, and try to cover it up.” Then she added a shade regally, “Mr Bristol, the gentlemen’s newspapers are waiting in the dining room. They always are.”

  There they were; a stack of them lying beside the serving dish that contained the kedgeree.

  Outside the door, Mrs Alderton was adding on a little note of outrage, “That woman has been masquerading as a nobody when all the time she’s been a Mrs Somebody, divorcee. Why should she get away with it?”

  Oddly enough I felt for her. I could see now that this discovery had been the cause of her triumphant agitation last night. Previously she must have only idly considered me a rival in the supposed race for the gentleman’s affections. Mary must have told her over dinner and for a moment Mrs Alderton had probably thought my handicap was enough to count the race won before it had even begun. Then I’d begun flinging accusations about and for the second night running Adam had come to my aid. I wondered if my fitness as a rival had festered overnight, so that she now had visions of a greater plot; one where I used my agitated state and the feminine wiles of an experienced schemer to seduce the great author as he left me at my bedroom door.