Closed at Dusk (15 page)

After Rex abandoned her, one of the bad things for Marigold had been that she had nothing she needed to do. She could have gone back to work. The school was always short of staff, but she could not face teaching, and she did not need to, thanks to the sale of the hotel when her mother died, and the London house that Rex had made over to her, plus panic payment for his freedom.

The worst thing had been having nobody to look after. For almost ten years she had lived for Rex, worked to support him while he was clawing his way up the financial ladder from nothing, done everything his way – looked and talked and behaved like the woman he wanted her to be, which he then used to condemn her when he didn't need her any more.

Nothing to do, and no one to look after. In the seven years since Rex walked out, Marigold had taken some museum courses and learned to do a few more things with her skilful hands, like calligraphy and mending fine china. But who needed her? No one. She did some volunteer work, but children were too painful, and old people too boring, and fund-raising too frustrating. Nothing she did engaged her, because all this time she was so fixated on her rage against Tessa, which had grown sharper when she heard about Rob's birth, that she could not connect with other people, nor take their problems or interests seriously. The anger gnawed at her, and grew fat on her substance.

When she heard through one of the few friends she still saw from the old days that Tessa had dumped Rex, rage overwhelmed her. What kind of an evil bitch is this, who steals a husband, gets a baby, and calmly walks out when it suits her?
Tessa Taylor, the arch-enemy, the fiend, the legion of demons, her and her wretchedly secure family, Tessa and her beloved child, who was Rex's son.

So Marigold had become Jo, to infiltrate the enemy camp. She watched and listened, and lost no opportunities to please. Ruth gave her a small salary increase, because she was working longer hours. Dorothy Taylor found herself employing Jo to do a few little extra jobs, like shopping or feeding the dogs and cats if everyone was out.

William, a man who seemed easily moved to both happiness and sorrow, was still downcast after his precious Troutie's death, but he warmed to Jo's enthusiasm for the gardens, and her desire to learn. She read a book on alpines, so that she could be intelligent in the greenhouse, and when he went to Saudi Arabia to see a client, he asked Jo to visit the alpine house every day to check the ventilation and watering.

‘I don't want to go away,' William told Dorothy, ‘even for a couple of days.'

‘Do you good, Will, a change of scene, and a bit of luxury living.'

‘I'd rather be here with you.'

He must have looked like this sometimes when he was a child.

‘It's been sad for you here, love,' Dottie said.

‘Everything was going well – and then, poor Troutie … what next, Dottie? All's not well.'

‘Oh, come on, Will.' She kissed him, and rubbed her cheek upwards against his, to lift his rumpled face into a smile. ‘It will be all right, you'll see. All
is
well. The family is fine. The gardens are more beautiful than ever. Don't you love to see people wandering about so happily, finding their peace here, wherever they come from? The rest of the summer is going to
be great, and you always love the Festival of the Lake. Nat Archer says entrance money is up from this time last year, and Ruth and Jo are doing excellent business in the tea-room.'

‘Jo's such a good worker.' William smiled. ‘Loves the garden, too, and keen to learn. She's going to keep an eye on my alpines while I'm away. She's a big help.'

Dorothy was at the clinic almost every day, but in the evenings while William was away she worked at the slow, intermittent job of painting the library, which had not been refurbished or used since she and William had taken over the house in the late seventies. She had finished the window frames and sills and was working on the two sets of double doors, and the panelled space between the outer and inner doors, originally designed to keep heat in and house noises out.

When Jo found out that this was one of Dorothy's many projects, she came forward, in her Josephine style, all firm pointed bosoms and dark curving hair swinging round her face.

‘I'd like to help, if you'd let me. I love to paint,' she said in the rather stagey voice she used when she was not sure how something was going to be received.

Dorothy's instinct was to decline, because she liked to work and think by herself, but with limited free time the work in the long tall room was going too slowly, because of the elaborate eighteenth-century mouldings and the intricate woodwork of the glass-fronted shelves.

She waited before answering, then took a breath to help her to say with enthusiasm, ‘Of course, Jo, if you'd really like to. I'd love to have some help.'

The free walls, patched with the ghosts of departed portrait frames, were going to be painted the colour of red dessert apples. The high plaster frieze would all have to be cleaned and repainted some day.

The library was still in a fairly depressing state, the wood floor dirty and scarred, the walls stained, the air musty and stale, in spite of open windows and the fresh paint.

‘Funny old smell in here,' Jo said to Dorothy, as they worked quite companionably, on each side of one of the high panelled doors.

‘It's the old books, I'm afraid. They've been so neglected, and this room was always damp.'

‘The leather bindings need proper treatment, I expect.'

‘I haven't got time to do that, and I don't know how,' Dorothy said from the outer side of the door. ‘It would cost the earth to get someone to come in and do it professionally.'

‘Perhaps I could do a few books for you some time?'

‘It's quite a difficult job, I think.' Dottie paused, gilding her way round a moulded wreath, and made a little puggy face at the door between them. Jo
was
capable, no doubt about it. She knew how to do a lot of things, but it was fun to find something she did not know how to do.

‘Oh, I know,' came Jo's confident voice. ‘Alec – my husband – his father worked for an antique dealer. He taught me a bit about it.'

‘Thanks, Jo.' Dottie heard her own voice, a little too cool and distant, even allowing for the door between them, but was there
nothing
this woman could not do? ‘I'll bear that in mind.'

When Keith looked round the other door to see what his aunt would like for supper, he was surprised to find Jo in a pair of denim overalls too big for her, sleeves rolled back and legs turned up over bare feet. She was paint-stained and workmanlike, but with that make-up, hair tied back in a jazzy scarf, and the tinkly bracelet, it was somehow like a stage costume, he thought.

‘Is it that late?' Aunt Dorothy said. ‘Are you hungry?'

‘No, but I thought you must be.'

‘I'll cook.' Aunt Dottie began to clean her brush. ‘I'll make you my special fish pie. You're not eating enough these days.'

She tidied up her things neatly, and peeled off her rubber gloves, blowing into them like a nurse to pop the fingers out. Keith thought she might make a bigger pie and invite Jo to stay for supper, but she only said, ‘Thanks so much, Jo, that's enough for the day. Come on, Fool.' She called to her dog, and went into the kitchen.

‘I'll just finish this bit, then I'll go.' Jo was standing on a stool inside the door.

‘They'll never get rid of the smell in here.' Keith sniffed what had been known as ‘the smell in the library' ever since he could remember.

‘It's the old books.'

‘That's what they say, but have you looked in the locked cupboards? Could be a body.'

‘Is that one of your fables?'

Keith enjoyed telling Jo, a new audience, some of The Sanctuary's myths and mysteries, time-worn, or invented to suit the occasion.

‘Well, my grandmother Sylvia did die in here, you know.'

‘Don't have me on.'

‘Not this time, honest. As she got older, she sort of gradually began to shut up bits of the house until she ended up living in just the kitchen and this room, with a mattress on the floor and a smelly old dog. She wouldn't let anyone clean the place up, but Troutie kept on coming to do what she could. One morning, after she'd been away to Agnes's for a bank-holiday weekend, she found my grandmother with the dog in here – been dead for three days.'

‘The dog too?'

‘No.' Did Jo think he had made this up, to match Troutie and the budgerigar taking the last trip together? ‘The dog was
all right. It had eaten most of the food that Troutie had brought.' He wanted to add that it had begun to eat bits of Grandma Sylvia, but Jo would only believe so much.

Jo got down from the stool, and admired her door.

‘It's beginning to look much better in here,' Keith said. ‘I suppose Aunt Dottie must be trying to exorcise the ghost. Oh, sorry – you don't believe in that sort of thing, do you?'

‘No, I don't.' Jo bent down to the paint pots on the floor, the ends of the gaudy scarf swinging over her shoulder.

‘Pity, because if you did, I could tell you about the lilies.'

‘What lilies?' Jo was kneeling down, cleaning brushes.

Keith's mother had once told him the story of the lilies, but Dorothy would never let it be talked about, or admit that it was true. He ought not to repeat it to Jo, but because he wanted to impress her, he was tempted to go on. ‘Once when Uncle William came to see his mother, soon after he was married, Dorothy went upstairs and then she comes down and says to Sylvia, ‘What's that overpowering smell in the big empty room at the corner?'

‘“What smell?” Sylvia asks, sharp as a terrier.

‘“Exotic, sort of churchy. Smells like dead lilies.”

‘“
Lilies
?” Sylvia is out of the room in a flash, and running half up the staircase. “Mother!” they hear her yell, in great fury. “What are you doing up there?”'

Keith put his hands in his pockets and looked at Jo solemnly. ‘Now her mother,' he went on, ‘had been dead for twenty-five years. She croaked in one of the first flu epidemics at the beginning of the war, in that corner room, where my uncle and aunt sleep now. She was laid out on her bed, with a great mass of hothouse lilies on her chest.'

It was disappointing that Jo only said, ‘Oh, well,' rubbing paint cleaner into her hands, not impressed. ‘You don't look very well, Keith,' she added.

‘I'm fine.'

‘I've heard that people with your illness can sometimes have relapses. Doesn't your mother worry, with you being here all summer, and not knowing how you are?'

‘My mother,' Keith said flatly. ‘Well, she'll be here soon. Then you'll see. She didn't want me to come here to recuperate, but Uncle William knew it was my best hope.'

‘Do you still see your doctor?'

‘I'm sick of doctors.'

‘I don't blame you. You've had a rotten time.'

‘Better days are coming.' Keith did feel stronger now, in a hopeful way that he had thought would never come to him again. ‘If I stay away from the quacks, I know I'll be all right at Cambridge in October. Got to be. They're going to let me take a linguistics course.'

‘Good for you. You certainly deserve it.'

Sometimes she came on a bit too hearty, spraying good cheer out of that exaggerated smile, but his ego was strong enough now to take nourishment, so he said, ‘Thanks for the sympathy. People here – they do know about the illness, but being the kind of family they are, they still smell whiffs of hypochondria.'

‘Like the lilies?' Jo laughed.

‘Don't tell Aunt Dorothy I told you that story.'

‘Of course not.'

‘She swears now it never happened.'

‘I can see why.'

Jo took a day off and went up to London to have her hair re-coloured and her eyebrows and lashes re-dyed.

‘Still shooting the film?' Veronica asked. This was the reason Jo had given when she first walked into the hairdresser's in an unfamiliar part of London and asked to be made into a brunette.

‘No, thank God. What a bore. But after all his complaints, my husband has decided he likes me this way, so I'll keep it for a bit.'

Having put about the story at The Sanctuary that she was tinting her hair because grey was coming in too early, Jo decided to reinforce that by having a few subtle streaks of silver-grey flecked into the front of the dark hair. She would answer comments with ‘I can't fight the grey, so I'll exploit it, and prepare you all for seeing me snow white some day.' Thus she could go on touching up the roots of her fawn hair without arousing suspicion.

With the frosty streaks, she was more dramatic than ever. She and Veronica decided that it looked smashing, and since it was still early afternoon, Jo celebrated with a side trip to Acton on the way to the motorway.

In her disguise of dark glasses and headscarf and the old raincoat she kept in the back of the car, a reminder of the drab old Marigold who was rejected by William and Dorothy, Jo skulked about at the top of Brackett Road and was rewarded by the sight of Tessa and Rob coming out of the house. They headed down the hill, and turned left towards the park. It was thrilling to shadow someone who was unaware of being followed. When they paused at lights, or Rob stopped to fiddle with a sandal, or veer off to investigate something, like a dog, Jo turned away at once and studied a shop window, in case either of them looked round.

Good old Jo, turn her hand to anything, she can. Trail your husband, lady? Check on your wife? If she got fired as a tea-person, she could make a living as a private eye.

In the park, it was easy. She lay face down on the grass behind a tree, and watched Rob being a monkey in the adventure playground, while Tessa sat on a bench with the
au pair
girls and read a book.

After a while, Jo went back to Brackett Road to look into the uncurtained ground-floor room as she walked past. By the kerb near the house was a worn green car that looked somehow familiar. Of course. It was Chris Harvey's car. Jo had last seen it disgracing the weedless gravel in front of The Sanctuary, before Chris removed it modestly to the yard outside the garages. It sported a local residents' sticker inside the windscreen. Chris had moved in with Tessa.