Down Among the Dead Men (29 page)

“Oh, yes. But she didn't say much about her own, simply that she had a well-paid job and money to burn. She charmed me. I had more compliments from Olivia the first two evenings we were together than I've had in the whole of my life. I was flattered. Who wouldn't be? I'm not promiscuous. I've been with two other women—brief affairs—and I'm almost forty now.”

“How old was Olivia?”

“Forty-seven. She didn't say, but I found out later. To be fair, she looked marvellous. She went to beauticians and the best hairdressers and of course her clothes were superb. My worry was that I was so drab beside her. I had one black dress, basically, for nights out, and the only changes were scarves and shawls I bought from a trader in the North End Road market. Olivia didn't complain. That second weekend she gave me a present, beautifully wrapped in a giftbox, and it was . . . clothes.”

“Intimate clothes?” Hen said.

Miss Gibbon turned sunset red.

Diamond stared into his tea.

“They were exquisite. Our Saturday meetings in the West End went on through the spring. Blissful, but soon both of us were finding it a strain meeting only at weekends. We wanted to be together all the time. Then Olivia asked me to move in with her. She said she had plans for me. I felt I knew her so well by then that whatever she was thinking of could only be something wonderful.”

“A civil partnership?”

“It crossed my mind, but I didn't like to ask. She made the decisions in our relationship and I wanted it to stay that way. It's my nature.”

“Did you take her up on the offer?” Diamond asked.

“I did. I moved in at the end of the week. She had a large house in Bosham overlooking the harbour.”

“Down here?”

“It's a lovely spot.”

“I know it well,” Hen said. “Bit different from the gay scene in London.”

“Different from a Fulham bed sit, too,” Constance Gibbon said. “I loved it as soon as I saw it. She made me very welcome. The house is palatial inside, Scandinavian in style and beautifully furnished.”

“Did you discover where her money came from?”

“She said it was from a legacy, but I found out later it wasn't. Anyway, I had no intention of being a kept woman, so I thought I'd look for a teaching position in a local school, in the hope that there were some openings here in Sussex. I went online and started actively searching, wanting to surprise Olivia by announcing that I'd joined the employed once again. It was midsummer and the schools were recruiting for the new session.”

“Were jobs more plentiful here than in Fulham?”

“Not really. The government is always saying there's a shortage of maths teachers, but when it comes to finding a school that wants one, it's a different story.”

“Maths?” Diamond said. “But you teach art.”

She sighed and shook her head. “That's where I went wrong. I was persuaded to teach art, but no, all my experience is in maths. Where was I? I'm telling this in the wrong order. Olivia caught me leafing through the
Times Educational Supplement
one morning and asked what I was up to, so I had to tell her I'd put several applications in, but hadn't been shortlisted. She gave me a hug and said she had been secretive, too, but now she was compelled to tell me the plan she'd mentioned before I moved in. To my utter amazement she told me she was the head of a private school for girls in Chichester.”

Diamond jerked forward, almost spilling the tea. “Which school?”

“Priory Park.”

“Miss Du Barry? You and Miss Du Barry are lovers?”

“Do you know her?”

“I've been to the school and met her. I didn't have an inkling of this. Didn't suspect it for a moment.”

“She's brilliant at keeping things to herself,” she said. “In London when we talked about my difficulties finding a teaching post, she never once mentioned that she was a school head, so when she came out with this I was dumbfounded. Nothing I knew about her seemed to suggest she was in the same profession as me, but it was true. She kept her personal and professional lives completely apart. Her plan, she said, was to offer me a teaching position to start in September. There was a vacancy on the staff and how would I feel about teaching art?”

“What did you say?”

“I was speechless. I knew almost nothing about the subject, but Olivia seemed to believe it was not only possible, but a breeze, to use her word. She said when an opportunity came she would find me a post teaching maths. Art was the one subject any experienced teacher could cope with because it's so individual. Each student has to develop her own creativity. The teacher is there mainly to encourage and inspire, not to work through a curriculum as you do in most other subjects. I could take them round galleries or look at images on the internet and teach them about the theory of composition, which is closely related to maths.”

“The golden mean,” Diamond said with all the authority of a man who had lasted one hour in a life class.

“Exactly. She showed me a syllabus and persuaded me I could handle it. In short, I agreed to take it on—the worst professional decision I ever made. You can't bluff your way through, you really can't.”

“Did the other teachers know you were living with the head?” Hen asked.

“Absolutely not. Olivia didn't want anyone to find out, so we travelled to school separately. She drove in and I took the bus. It's only a short ride. I was introduced as a new member of staff from London and no one questioned me. I'm quite a private person anyway and others seem to respect that.”

“Facing a class must have been an ordeal.”

“Any teacher fills in for absent colleagues from time to time, so it wasn't terrifying. I tried my best. I believed, and still do, that one can analyse the structure of a picture in geometrical terms, but it failed to excite the students. The ones who choose art are more interested in flouting the rules rather than observing them. I was trying to constrain them while they wanted to take risks and break out.”

“Did you have trouble keeping discipline?” Hen asked.

She shook her head. “It's not that sort of school. There were a few mischief-makers, but there always are. I can handle them. My difficulty was that I had no confidence in myself as a teacher of the subject. In desperation I decided to join a recreational art group to experience practical art.”

“Tom's group?”

“Yes, I made enquiries and heard that they were the best. The Saturday mornings fitted in nicely with my teaching. So I came to Fortiman House. The standard was depressingly high. They're professional artists, some of them, and I was just a beginner, but several gave me tips. Tom was particularly generous with his advice.”

“Did Miss Du Barry know what you were up to?”

“I had no reason to be secretive. She thought it sensible. I didn't have transport, so she gave me a lift in and left me at the gate. Later, one of the others who also lived in Bosham—a nice woman called Drusilla—took over the ferrying.”

“I've met Drusilla,” Diamond said. “I did a session with the artists myself.”

Hen gave him a disbelieving frown and then turned back to Miss Gibbon. “Did it help you at the school?”

“Helped my confidence, a bit. I was hanging on, hoping a position would arise in the maths department. Two whole years went by. I kept saying to Olivia that I felt a fraud, but she insisted I was a success and they'd get through their exams. Most of them did in the first year, but no thanks to me. It was down to their own talent.”

“What went wrong, then?”

She lowered her eyes. “Our relationship. A silly, embarrassing thing was blown up out of all proportion. She asked me to get a tattoo. I'm not a tattoo person. I don't care for them.”

“What kind of tattoo?” Hen asked.

“Her name between a red rose and a heart.”

“Olivia?”

“All of it—Olivia Du Barry.”

“The full moniker. Where was it to go?”

Miss Gibbon blushed deeply again. “My lower back. She said once it was done I would never see it unless I used a mirror. She made an issue of it. She told me if I was unwilling to have her name tattooed on my flesh it must be because I didn't intend to stay with her. It wasn't that. And it wasn't the pain of having it done. What upset me was that it was like being branded, being marked as her possession. She said if I couldn't do that simple thing to please her, I was selfish. She kept on about it.”

“Did she offer to have your name tattooed on her own butt?”

“It was never suggested.”

“Does she have tattoos?”

“No. And what's more, she won't allow any of the Priory Park students to have them. One girl came in with a tiny heart design on her face and was asked to leave.”

“Double standards.”

“That's what I thought, but I didn't say so.”

“You were right to stand firm,” Hen said. “You
didn't
get the tattoo, I hope?”

“I almost did, just to end the friction between us. In fact, I got to the point of enquiring about tattooists in Chichester. Our relationship was under such a strain that I thought about getting the wretched thing done in secret and”—she gave an embarrassed cough—“letting Olivia find it. The sense of relief would have been wonderful. One Saturday on the way home in the car I asked Drusilla—who seems to know everything—if there was a reliable tattoo artist she knew. For some reason this amused her and she asked what I was planning and it was a critical moment. I needed desperately to confide in someone other than Olivia, so I told Drusilla all about my relationship and my reluctance to get the tattooing done. To my surprise, she pulled the car over and stopped at the side of the road and said I'd be mad to go through with it. She'd known Olivia when she was at school and her name wasn't Du Barry. It was Dewberry. She was plain Olive Dewberry then.”

Diamond could scarcely hold back the laughter. Olive Dewberry—he loved it. But he couldn't risk upsetting this solemn woman at the climax of her story. Miss Gibbon hadn't paused. She was very wound up.

“She'd started calling herself Olivia Du Barry after she won the big prize on the national lottery. That was where her wealth came from. I'd been led to think it was inherited and the Du Barrys were an old Sussex family. I'd been completely taken in and she wanted me permanently labelled with this false name—as if it confirmed her status.”

“Did you take it up with her?” Hen said.

“Certainly I did. I was more angry than I can say. The hypocrisy didn't seem to register with her. She didn't deny any of it. She called me vile names I can't repeat and turned the whole thing round and accused me of latching onto her because she had money and position. It was deeply wounding. She told me to leave at once, and I said I had no intention of staying. I gathered my things, only the things I'd bought myself. I left behind all the clothes and presents she'd given me. I filled the one suitcase I'd arrived with and walked out without saying goodbye.”

“Where did you go?”

“I took the bus to Chichester. I thought of returning to London, but I had nowhere to stay. At times like this you need the help of friends. I thought about trying to contact Drusilla, but it was awkward. She'd been shocked to learn that I was lesbian. You don't need antennae to tell you when somebody disapproves. I'm not sure how she would have reacted if I'd asked her to let me stay with her. Instead I thought of the one person who had shown me kindness throughout—Tom Standforth. I got on the phone and blurted out to Tom that I was homeless and could he possibly put me up for the night at Fortiman House. He didn't hesitate. He came to collect me from the bus station. He must have seen my pitiful state at once because he said I was to stay there as long as I wished. I spent the first night in a spare room in the main house and the next day he showed me this cottage and said his father owned it and asked if I'd like to live here while I got myself together again. It's ideal for me. I just wanted some time out from the world. He brought over fresh bedding and food and cleaned the main rooms and he's made sure I've lacked for nothing ever since. I can't speak of him too highly.”

“You wanted nobody else to know where you were?” Hen said.

“It was a breakdown, or whatever they call it these days—post-traumatic stress. My emotions had been shattered. Even speech was difficult for me. I needed time to shut out the world and rest up. I stayed indoors for weeks. Only in the past few days have I ventured outside for a walk around the lake.”

“In a beanie hat,” Diamond said.

“You saw me?”

“A long way off.”

“I'm much better than I was. If you thought I was living here illegally, I promise you I'm not. Tom will vouch for that. He's visited me every day and got shopping in for me.”

“Seen anyone else?” Diamond asked. He slipped the question in casually, as if it had just occurred to him, but the answer mattered hugely.

“How would I? It's private here.”

“I was thinking of one of the Priory Park students who may have come here looking for you on the night the artists had their party.”

“Looking for me?” Her face was a study in disbelief.

Diamond nodded, willing her, almost begging her, to break through the black cloud of uncertainty that hung over them.

“Who on earth are you talking about?”

“Mel.”

“Melanie Mason, the quiet one?” She widened her eyes. “What would she want from me?”

“You may not know it, but Mel was troubled that you'd left the school so suddenly, and when she discovered you're officially a missing person she decided to try and find you. She learned that you'd been one of the Fortiman House art group and there's reason to believe she came here that evening in search of more information. She didn't return home and she hasn't been seen since.”