The Black Mountains (62 page)

“That's a lot of nonsense!” Charlotte said shortly. “ Strikes never did anybody any good. And who wants the coal mines owned by the nation anyway? I can't see Lloyd George making a better boss than Hal, can you?”

Dolly shook her head.

“Senseless, that's what it is. Senseless!” Charlotte pronounced. And then, as she took a wedge of Jack's favourite Cheddar cheese out of her basket, she went on, “I wonder how they're feeding our Jack at that hostel place?”

Jack had left Hillsbridge for Bristol and was living in a hostel near to the University where he was studying. To Charlotte, it seemed he had recovered from Rosa's departure much better than she had dared hope. He had been upset to begin with, of course, and Charlotte salved her conscience by telling herself that he most likely realized it had all been for the best.

“I'm in hopes he'll meet that O'Halloran girl when he gets settled in,” she confided to Dolly. “ She was sweet on him, all right, you could see that, and they'd make a lovely couple.”

“Don't you ever stop matchmaking, Mam?” Dolly teased. She was engaged again, to Victor Colman, the young man from Bath.

Amy, too, seemed fairly settled with Arthur Packer, the book-maker's clerk, back now from the war and doing quite well for himself.

“Well, he always seems to have plenty to spend on our Amy, anyway,” Dolly had remarked, and Charlotte suggested she should repeat the piece of information to Ted next time he came home.

“He's too keen on horse-racing for my liking,” she said tartly. “And if he sees what Arthur Packer has to spend, perhaps it'll make him realize the bookie always wins in the end.”

Since he had left home in the spring, Ted had done a variety of things, and none of them had really met with Charlotte's approval. He had gone to London first and got a job at the Alexandra Palace, cleaning windows. Then, when that had palled, he had worked his way around the south-east. By September, he had been a labourer in Harrow, stacked deck-chairs in Margate, and picked hops in Kent, and before the year was out, he was back in London, cleaning more windows at Somerset House.

But whatever he did, he was driven by restlessness. The only way to assuage his grief and pain was to constantly be moving on. Over two years in a prison camp would have been unsettling enough. To come home and find the girl he had loved so much dead had left him completely bereft and with no sense of direction.

The months went by, and the seasons, and still Ted drifted. And when summer came again, he took another job as a deck-chair attendant, this time at Weymouth, on the south coast.

As work went, it was one of his better jobs. He liked the feeling of sand between his toes and sun beating down on his face when it was fine. When it was not, there was some of the old comradeship of the trenches, squeezing under the canvas awning of the tea-stall, sharing a plate of cockles and a cigarette with the other beach attendants.

One summer afternoon, he was leaning against his pile of deck-chairs when he saw a party of four coming along the beach. He glanced at them idly, the two men in their blazers and straw boaters, the girls giggling and holding on to one another as they tried to walk on the soft sand. Then he pulled himself upright, staring in surprise.

Surely that was Marjorie Downs! He hadn't seen her since he had gone off to join the Somersets, but his mother had written in one of her letters that Marjie had gone off to marry a Canadian officer. Now, here she was in Weymouth, hurrying towards him, and looking as pleased to see him as if they had been the closest of friends.

“Ted!” she greeted him. “What are you doing here?”

“Working!” he rejoined. “That's more than you're doing.”

“Nobody can work all the time. I'm on holiday.”

“So I see!”

“You're looking well, Ted, and no mistake!” Marjorie was taking in his golden tan and sun-bleached hair. “And at one time we thought you were dead!”

The irony of her words struck them both at the same time, and her eyes fell away from his. “Oh, Ted, I'm so sorry.”

Her companions were standing a little way off, watching impatiently. She half-turned as if to leave, but Ted caught at her arm. He couldn't let her go like this. She was his one last link with Becky.

“Were yon there, Marjie, when she …?”

“In Hillsbridge, you mean?” There was an expression in her eyes he could not read—evasive, perhaps. “Yes.”

“What happened to her, Marjie? I've never been able to find out the rights of it.”

“Oh, Ted, it's a long time ago …” Again the evasion.

“Come on, Marjie!” one of her friends called, and she looked over her shoulder.

“All right. I'm coming.”

“Please, Marjie! I must know!”

She hesitated. “ I can't tell you now, Ted. It's a long story, and you've got customers and my friends are waiting.”

“Can I see you some other time, then? Your husband …”

“He's not my husband. Just a friend. Oh, oh all right. I'll see you at the entrance to the pier tonight. Say half past eight? Wait for me if I'm late.” Then she had gone, giggling with the others as they went off along the sands.

AS THE DAY wore on, he began to wonder if Marjorie would keep the appointment, and somehow it seemed increasingly unlikely, so that by the time he had bolted down his supper at his lodgings and changed from the casual clothes he wore on the beach into a more respectable jacket and trousers, he was almost certain she would not. But a few minutes after eight-thirty he saw her coming along the promenade alone.

He walked to meet her, and she caught at his arm, smiling at him mischieviously. “Did you think I wouldn't get away? You don't know how crafty I can be, Ted. Or else you've forgotten!”

He ignored this. The last thing he wanted now was intrigue. “Shall we go on the pier?” he suggested. “We ought to be able to talk quietly there.”

“Yes, all right. It's a nice night,” she agreed, though not very enthusiastically, he thought.

“I thought you got married, Marjie,” he said, putting off the moment when he would ask her again about Becky. “What happened to your husband?”

She pulled a face. “ I didn't like him much. Uniform does a lot to hide the real man, don't you think? In it, he seemed very strong and masterful. Out of it … well, he was just a bully. And nobody's going to bully
me
, thank you very much.”

“No,” he said, but the same thought had occurred to both of them, and they fell silent. Then, when they had passed through the turnstile and the crush of people around the first bank of fun machines, he turned to her again.

“I'm grateful to you coming to meet me like this, Marjie. I know it can't have been easy for you. But like I said to you this afternoon, I've never really been able to find out the truth about Becky. Her father was dead too by the time I got home from the war, and her mother in the asylum. And Mam didn't seem to know anything—or if she did, she wasn't saying.”

Marjorie looked puzzled. “But she went to see your Mam,” she said.

“What?”

“Rosa Clements saw her coming out of your house a few days before she died. We were talking about it at the shop …”

“But Mam never said anything to me! She just said Becky was home from Wycherley.”

Marjorie looked embarrassed. “Perhaps I've put my foot in it then. But you're asking me about Becky, and you'd do better not to, Ted, honestly.”

“Why?”

“Because you won't like it. Look, she's been dead a long time, now. Why don't you just leave it?”

“You can't back out of it now, Marjie,” Ted said. “ I want to know what's going on—and what people have been keeping back from me.”

“All right.” She took a deep breath, leaning against the pier balustrade and looking out to sea. “They'd moved house, of course, before all this happened. But she used to write to me when she could, and sometimes, if she was in Hillsbridge with her mother, shopping, she'd come into Fords to see me. That was how I found out about Rupert Thorne.”

“Who's Rupert Thorne?”

“A relation of Becky's. Her father always wanted them to make a match of it. Didn't she tell you about him?”

“Yes, she did mention him. I'd just forgotten his name. But she couldn't stand him.”

“I know. But Alfred wanted it, and when Alfred wanted something … Anyway, I think that's why he got her home from Wycherley—so that Rupert could court her.”

“You mean he was going out with her?” Ted asked, shocked.

“Yes, but … she was able to take a rise out of him at first. He'd broken his arm, you see, and was in plaster, and she told me once it was almost funny seeing him trying to …” She broke off, sudden tears filling her eyes. “That was just Becky being brave, of course. If she hadn't laughed about it, she'd have gone raving mad.”

“Go on,” Ted said grimly into the small silence.

“Well, I don't really know any more for certain,” Marjorie explained hesitantly. “ Suddenly there was this … silence. She didn't write, or come into the shop, although Rosa said she'd seen her coming out of your house. I couldn't understand it at the time. But afterwards …” She broke off again.

“Afterwards?” Ted pressed her. “After what?”

“Well, it was something I overheard at the funeral, and I started putting two and two together. Rupert was there, but not with the family mourners as you'd expect. And Alfred got in one of his rages when he saw him. There was quite a scene—they almost came to blows. And Alfred was talking about something Rupert had given to Becky, asking where he'd got it, and saying Dr Froster wanted to know, too.”

“Dr Froster?” Ted said, puzzled. “What's he got to do with it?”

“Well …” She bit her lip, her eyes flickering to Ted's face and away again. “ This really is conjecture, of course. But I think she was going to have a baby, and he'd given her something to get rid of it.”

Ted stood rigid with amazement and honor. “
A baby? Becky?
”

“I know. It doesn't sound like her. But it's the only thing that fits. I think when his arm was out of plaster, he started molesting her and things got out of hand. Then, when he realized what he'd done, he got the wind up and gave her something to get rid of it. Perhaps she took more than she was supposed to, I don't know. All I keep thinking is … if only she'd told me! But then, I can understand, really. She was ashamed, I suppose.”

Ted stood stunned. Beneath him the boards of the pier seemed to rock; the sway of the waves nauseated him; and the sea wind took his breath away. At last he said, “Do you think that's why she went to see my mother?”

“To get in touch with you. I think so.”

“But Mam said she died just after they heard I was missing … Oh God!” he stopped, horrified, as a new thought struck him. “You don't think she took too much of whatever it was on purpose, do you?”

Marjorie bowed her head. “I don't know.”

“Oh, Becky—Becky!” It was an anguished cry torn from deep inside him, and for a moment they stood in silence staring out to sea. Then, with a suddenness that almost frightened her, his grief had turned to anger, white-hot, searing, cauterizing.

“Rupert Thorne—the bastard! She didn't just die, I knew it! Oh let him wait—I'll kill him, Marjie, I will!”

“Ted, Ted, don't do anything silly …” She was trembling now. “It's over. Even Dr Froster's dead, isn't he? They're all dead …”

“Rupert Thorne's not dead.” Ted's eyes were grey and steely. “And I'll get to the bottom of this if it's the last thing I do. I owe her that much, Marjie.”

She nodded. She, too, had lost her friend.

“What will you do?” she asked.

“I don't know yet. But I'll tell you one thing. The first train home, I'll be on it. And that bastard Rupert Thorne is going to wish he'd never been born!”

CHARLOTTE was startled when Ted arrived home the following day without so much as a word of warning. And the look of him alarmed her still more. She had seen him tense before, but never had she seen him quite like this—no, not even when she had told him Rebecca was dead. There was a hardness about his mouth that had not been there before, an expression in his eyes that defied description. And when Nipper rushed up to him, trying to jump up for a pat, he pushed him aside with only an impatient, “ Down, boy!”

“Well, this is a surprise!” she said, trying to hide her misgivings. “I never expected you today. If I'd known you were coming …”

“I didn't know myself until last night,” he said, shortly. “ Mam, I want to talk to you.”

“Well, give me a chance to put the kettle on first,” she said, but he was in no mood to wait.

“I've been told Becky came to see you just before she died. Is that right?”

The kettle slipped out of her hand, landing on the hob with a thud, so that water splashed out of the spout. Dear Lord, who could have told him? she thought but aloud she said, “For goodness sake, Ted, what is all this?”

“Did she come, Mam?”

Charlotte sighed then, straightening up. “Well, yes, she did. But …”

“Then why didn't yon tell me?”

“Because, oh, I don't know, I didn't want to upset you, I suppose.”

“You didn't want to upset me! She was dead, my girl, and you didn't want to upset me!”

“It wasn't like that, Ted …”

“Why did she come, Mam?”

“
Why?
” She hadn't expected that question. “I don't know, Ted. I've often asked myself the same.”

“What do you mean?”

“It was funny, really. When she came to the door, I thought it was because she'd heard about you, being missing, I mean. But I was wrong. She didn't know. I could tell that by her reaction. And then, well, she went again. I never saw her again.”