A Hint of Witchcraft (30 page)

‘Like his father. The same sense of humour but much better looking,' was Jane's verdict, ‘and more interesting. He always was as a boy but now – I was really impressed. What he's doing in an out-of-the-way place like Ashlaw' – she gazed dreamily at her breakfast egg – ‘I can't imagine. Not wasting his talents, I hope, when he has worlds to conquer. Could it be some sentimental attachment to the old place?'

‘Some of us are very fond of Ashlaw.' Margot spoke rather tartly. Lance had never been the sort of person one worried about. Suspecting that she was nevertheless beginning to worry about him, she exerted herself to make the most of the remaining days of Jane's visit. They walked, went for drives and, with Mr Todd's help, resurrected the old pony trap, harnessed the pony, grown fat in retirement, and ambled along deserted lanes leading eventually to wilder country where the air was heather-scented and the water pure in peat-brown streams.

‘You've done so many things, Jane, and never been bored or lonely.'

It was their last day. The picnic was over; Margot put the plates and cups back in the basket and closed the lid.

‘Bored? Never.' Jane sat up and brushed purple florets from her skirt. She was a slim woman, energetic in her movements and physically strong. Only in the depths of her eyes and in the lines about them was there evidence of her experience of scenes very different from this quiet spot under a cloudless sky and of people very different from her present companion. ‘But lonely? Often. In fact, always. Loneliness is something to tackle or put up with and get used to. Every human being is lonely: it's a fact of life. The intervals when one doesn't feel lonely are a sort of bonus, like this one – and it's time to go home.'

‘The tone of that speech was bracing like the ones you made to homesick soldiers and plaintive orphans and weary old ladies.'

‘Don't forget the members of committees, wives of drunken husbands.…'

‘And the husbands themselves?'

‘Sometimes, though usually it was the wives who drove them to drink.'

In trying to solve the tantalizing problem of where she had seen Toria before, Jane had dipped into memories of those earlier days. She had turned the pages of the Humberts' histories of art in vain. Some of El Greco's faces were of the right shape but those were of men; his women were more gentle. Bosch's
Pedlar
was not pale enough. She was now less inclined to believe that Toria had glowered down at her from the wall of an art gallery. The more she saw of her, though it was never for more than a minute or two, the more convinced she was that her memory was of the actual woman. Somewhere, in a hospital or casualty station, in an orphanage, in a London settlement, in one of several private houses including a vicarage and an almost stately home, she had seen Toria Link. It must have been a long time ago and no more than a glimpse: there had been no close association and no words had been exchanged. All she remembered was the face. No, there was more: a sense of disaster connected with it or with the place where she had seen it. That should not have been surprising: disasters, as Connie often said, were meat and drink to her sister Jane. And as Jane herself was to say in telling the story, it was typical of the melodramatic atmosphere of Langland Hall that clarification should come only at the eleventh hour, in the very nick of time.

The long journey to the Cotswolds involved a number of changes and she had to make an early start the next morning. Margot would come with her as far as Elmdon. Edward had left even earlier for a consultation in Derbyshire, consequently there was no car available.

‘I thought you'd rather have Polly than a taxi.'

‘Much rather! Our last ride!' They waited on the steps as the trap was brought round. ‘It's been perfect, every minute of it. And you'll come to us as soon as the house is ready, won't you? After all, Bourton-on-the-Water is a beauty spot. Connie's choice as you know. I'll get used to it.' Jane looked round. ‘I've said goodbye to everyone but Toria.'

Margot explained that Toria was shopping in Fellside. She would be waiting at the station and would drive herself and her packages back to the Hall. Polly was in no hurry and the train was there when they arrived. There was just time to find an empty compartment; the door was slammed, the whistle blown and the train moved. Having settled the hat-box on the rack, Margot dropped into the corner seat opposite Jane and was addressed in what she afterwards described as low and thrilling tones.

‘Margot! I've got it. I've remembered. It was when she came out of the waiting-room just now. Toria. That was how I saw her – in a station rather like this one, with square bay windows opening on to the platform and brass lamps.…'

It was during the war. She had been spending a few days at Oxcote, a small Midland town, with a friend, Eliza Miller, also a VAD, whose father was a nonconformist minister there. They were on leave from a spell of duty in a hospital behind the battle area at Ypres.

‘We were both pretty well fagged out. The Germans had started using gas.' Chlorine and phosgene, she remembered. One minute of exposure to the gas and a man would be fighting for breath, blue in the face. As fluid rose in his lungs, he died of it as if by drowning. The casualties were brought in thick and fast, most of them too late, some blinded; and they were so young, many no more than eighteen or nineteen. Staring out at the quiet countryside between Fellside and Elmdon, she revisited scenes she had at times been able to forget. She had almost forgotten Eliza Miller for that matter.

‘And Toria?' They would soon be in Elmdon. There wasn't much time.

‘It's all rather vague to me now. Her father was the station master, a highly respected man and an elder of Mr Miller's congregation. The name wasn't Link, by the way. If it had been, I'd have put two and two together without so much mental torture. She must have married.'

‘I don't think so.'

‘Then she changed her name because of the scandal. I never grasped the details but some money was missing. The station master was held responsible and was dismissed after more than thirty years with the Midland Company. Apparently it was a company rule. What sticks in my memory is that he also lost his home. That's what I remember. I had boarded the train to go home and Eliza was seeing me off. “Look”, she said and we saw the two of them, father and daughter, come out of the house at the end of the platform. He locked the door and they went slowly to the gate. As the train pulled out I saw them on the road, two people with nowhere to go. She has kept the sadness I felt in her then.'

Their own train was slowing down. Margot reached for the hat-box and hand luggage: Jane groped for her ticket.

‘I never saw Eliza again. We had different postings. But she did mention in a letter that the man had died of a stroke. People said it was of shame and grief. A scoundrel from a neighbouring village was later charged with the theft. There was no news of the daughter. After the funeral she had left without a word to anyone.'

The sad story deserved more sensitive treatment than to be gasped out as they hurried to change platforms. They parted with regret and with the firm intention of meeting again soon. Margot had planned to stay in town and shop, instead she took the next train to Fellside.

Toria was stacking logs in the woodshed.

‘Leave those, Toria. I want to talk – but not here.'

They walked up the hill to the priory, Margot too full of all she had to say to say a word; Toria aloof in her habitual reserve. They sat down, Margot on the base of the fallen column; Toria on the grass with the remains of a buttress to lean on.

‘Miss Bondless recognized you, Toria.'

She had been unprepared, but she gave no other sign than a quick intake of breath and then an added stillness.

‘You know some of my secrets but you have never told me yours. You never talk about yourself. Miss Bondless thought your father was harshly treated. Would it help to tell me about it? You have nothing to be ashamed of.'

‘Miss Bondless doesn't know it all. There's no one living who does know it all, except me. But I owe it to you, Miss Margot, to tell what I wouldn't breathe to anyone else.'

Her natural reticence, intensified by years of solitude, made it hard for her to begin. The story emerged slowly; there were long pauses.

Oxcote had been a sleepy little place before the war when an army camp a mile and a half away brought an increase of trade to the town and an influx of passengers to the station. Among the soldiers who came and went was a sergeant in charge of freight. Waiting for deliveries, he had time to chat to the station-master's daughter. They were drawn to each other, Toria said.

One day in January dense fog had disrupted the timetable; trains had been late all day, including the last train, due at ten minutes past ten. Her friend Steven – she could barely utter the name she had not spoken for sixteen years – had driven over from the camp to make a final enquiry about the consignment he was expecting. By that time the fog had cleared a little. Her father had been called out shortly before ten o'clock to deal with an emergency in the signal box.

As Steven marched up and down the platform she had taken the unusual step of asking him into the warm kitchen for a cup of tea. Her father would have been agreeable, she assured Margot, but it was unbecoming to be in the house alone with a man late at night and that was one of the reasons why, later on, she had sworn there was no one with her. It was the last time they would be together: his unit was to move out the next day.

The day's takings, sometimes considerable at that busy time, were entered in the ledger and the money with a signed statement of the amount was placed in a black leather bag and padlocked, to be handed to the company collector who came out on the last train. Her father had ventured to complete the paperwork, assuming there would be no more passengers that night and had the bag all ready before he was unexpectedly called out, except – it was his one error in a lifetime of faithful service – he had not locked it.

It lay on the table of the inner room. Toria and Steven were together in the adjoining kitchen. Other couples might have taken the opportunity to draw closer still but Steven always behaved correctly (she had believed) and Toria was on edge, expecting her father's return. Having drunk a cup of tea, Steven was prepared to resume his waiting on the platform. He had promised to come back but the parting might be for a long time and there were so many who never came back. She had gone upstairs to put on her coat, intending to go out with him, and spent a minute or two in tidying her hair.

‘That must have been when he did it. It was the only time he was alone. There was no one else who could have taken it.'

By the next morning he was gone before the theft was discovered. He had been clever enough not to take too much from the heavy bag, no more than a few pounds. She had been mistaken in him: he was no better than a common thief. It was partly to conceal her own folly that she had protected him by swearing that she had been alone, not because she forgave him. Disillusionment had been as hard to bear as the loss of home and reputation. There were people in the town who suspected her of taking the money though no charges were brought; disgrace and loss of home were sufficient punishment. She blamed herself for her father's ruin. She accepted the shame of being suspected as her own share of it.

‘There can be no worse punishment than to be put to shame and ruin for something you didn't do.'

In telling her story she had kept her voice low: at times it was scarcely audible, but those words were spoken with sudden vehemence and she looked up with a curious defiance at variance with her previously subdued manner. ‘Shame, ruin, punishment.…' Surely she had used such language before in speaking of some other incident. Margot had been alarmed by the suggestion of total disaster implied by the word ‘ruin'. The memory was fleeting: Toria had not quite finished.

She had left Oxcote, had eventually found work on a farm and had stayed there for years until the owner died and the place was sold. The work had been hard but worse hardship followed and she had plumbed the depths. Burdons' had been a palace compared with some of the places where she had worked. There had come a time when, in desperation, she had laid out the few pounds she had kept as a safeguard on haberdashery and a pedlar's tray, to stand in the street and to be taken for a gipsy, until her tray was upset and her goods were trampled on in the dirt of a wet pavement.

Upset! Trampled on!

‘Surely you don't mean that it was done deliberately?'

‘Perhaps not. But the one who did it cared no more for what she'd done than if I'd been dirt under her feet.'

‘A woman! I thought perhaps rough boys.…'

‘The only rough boy was the one who helped me to pick things up.'

‘I can't imagine what sort of woman would behave like that.'

‘I swore I'd never speak her name again in hatred.' And as Margot listened in growing amazement, ‘It pains me to speak about her at all. But I'll tell you a strange thing: I could hardly believe it, when I came here knowing nothing of what I would find, I found them both here, the two of them. I looked down from the landing and saw her warm by the fire – and the lad who helped me, he was there too.'

Ewan. And Linden! It was almost to be expected that in any calamitous situation she would be involved – she was inescapable – and yet Margot shared Toria's sense of the strangeness. Strange indeed that the three of them should come together again – by chance – in so different a setting! By chance? It would not seem so to Toria who did not believe in chance. The loss of her merchandise must have been the last straw, judging by the suppressed pain in her voice and expression. No wonder she hated Linden – had hated her long before they almost met again at Miss Burdon's. ‘It nearly killed me,' she was saying. ‘I lost all hope.' It would not have been surprising if she had dreamed – hopelessly one would think – of revenge. The astonishing thing was that she had found a way of achieving it. The instrument had been put into her hand: she had seen Linden steal. That it could only have happened by chance – if one believed in chance – made the complex interweaving of circumstances all the stronger.