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Authors: Marcia Willett

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BOOK: The Courtyard
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‘Thank God that she'd moved all her precious things to Nethercombe.' Gussie looked quickly at Henry who was a JP. ‘You won't tell them about those, will you?' she asked anxiously.
‘Of course not,' said Henry indignantly. ‘A few sticks of furniture! How is she today?'
‘Getting stronger but …' Gussie sighed and shook her head. ‘What a dreadful, dreadful blow. To lose your husband and baby and then discover that you're about to be evicted and you have no money.'
This had, by now, occurred to Nell. Slowly the loose ends were being tied up and soon she must face the future.
‘But have I got a future, Gussie?' she asked one evening at the flat, where Henry had bought her time and a breathing space.
Jack had come home and Nell had told him the truth. He'd stood white-faced and very straight beside her at the funeral of John and the baby boy whom they had planned, during those happy, peaceful days together, to call Henry Augustus. Nell wept for her baby and tried to think of John with some other emotion than anger and Jack put his arm round her and tried to comfort her.
‘Of course you have a future.' Gussie's brand of realistic, unemotional sympathy gave her courage but Nell sighed.
‘Oh, Gussie. I want to believe it but I don't know what to do or where to go. What shall we live on? Where shall we live? I can't believe that we have no home.' Her voice shook and she swallowed back the tears that these days were always near the surface. She still felt so weak. ‘I'm so frightened.'
‘My dear Nell.' Gussie raised her eyes from Jack's jersey which she was mending. ‘What can you mean? I thought you realised that as soon as you're strong enough and everything's wound up you and Jack will come to us.' She looked at Nell's puzzled face and clicked her tongue impatiently. ‘Well really, Nell! What are you thinking of? Where on earth would your home be other than with us at Nethercombe? '
 
 
WHEN SEVERAL WEEKS PASSED and there was no letter from Henry, Gillian began to feel anxious. The days dragged by. Sam had an office in Avignon to which he went most days although he continued to promise her that very soon he would be in a position to delegate most of his responsibilities to someone whom he had taken on and was in the process of training up. When she asked him how things were going at the site in Dartmouth he stared at her blankly for a moment.
‘Oh, yes. Sorry. Got a lot on my mind at the moment. Oh, it's going fine. No problems. By the way, I've arranged a meeting with an English couple who want to look at a property we've got on the books. I'd like you to come along.'
‘Oh?' Gillian looked at him in surprise. He'd once told her that she was going to be very useful to him but, apart from finding John, there had been no further suggestion that she should interest herself in his affairs. ‘Why specially?'
‘Oh.' Sam pursed his lips and shrugged. ‘I'd just like you to be there. Lend tone and all that. As my wife, of course.'
Fear jumped into her heart.
‘But who are they? Suppose they know me … ?'
‘Oh, come on, darling! They come from the north. He's got a little factory or something and he's made a reasonably respectable packet and he wants to spend it but, having a good, hard, north-country head, he also wants to see it working for him.' He grinned at her. ‘And I want to help him. What's the old saying: “A fool and his
money are soon parted”? Anyway,' he gave her a tiny wink, ‘you'll lend a touch of class to the proceedings.'
‘OK. But you'll have to tell me what it's all about.'
‘Naturally.' Sam looked more closely at her. She seemed to have lost some of her sparkle. ‘What about, something new for the occasion? I want you to look good. Prosperous. Mind you, they'll be so relieved that you speak English that it won't matter too much what you wear. Still, it's time you had a jolly.'
Even the prospects of a jolly couldn't quite lift Gillian's spirits but Sam, on the edge of a rather tricky deal, was too preoccupied to notice. When almost another week had passed and there was still no letter, Gillian swallowed her pride and wrote to Henry. She suddenly felt frightened that her short, guarded, irregular replies may have been so discouraging that he'd given up and a sudden flicker of anxiety which she didn't pause to analyse hurried her across to her little desk. She wrote a more friendly letter than usual, wondering how they all were and if they'd enjoyed Easter.
The week after she'd met Sam's clients, she found a letter waiting for her at the post office and with a surprisingly strong feeling of relief she rushed home with it.
She read it several times, shock and horror mounting in her breast. She simply couldn't take in this dreadful news: John dead, the baby dead, Nell ill and destitute. The pages drifted to her lap as she stared ahead, facts slotting into places, conversations taking on new meanings and the component parts adding up to a horrific whole. Her head reeled as she tried to make sense of it all. Naturally, Henry had no idea that Gillian's lover was the man who had brought about this disaster. He described, simply and straightforwardly, how – having heard of the site through some estate agent acquaintance – John had been taken in by its owner. He told in stark – and therefore effective – terms the depth of the deception practised upon Nell and the effect when John, unable to face life any longer, had left the appalling consequences for her to shoulder alone. Gillian sat, stunned and shocked, prey to a
whole host of conflicting emotions, the least admirable of which was terror that her part in the affair may be discovered. And then what?
At this point, Gillian knew without doubt that she wanted to go back to Nethercombe and Henry. But what if he should find out that it was she who had seduced John into the meeting with Sam and then run away with him? With trembling hands she lifted the sheets and read on. Oh God! The police had questioned Simon whose name had been on the drawings in John's desk. Simon, wrote Henry, had done the work at Sam's request and been paid for it but had heard nothing since and, learning through the grapevine that the site had gone to auction, assumed that Sam had gone abroad. John, apparently, had telephoned Simon who'd put him straight on to the bank.
Gillian drew a deep breath. At least Simon hadn't dropped her in it and no one else knew … Her hands flew to her lips; Lydia knew! She knew Sam's name and if she should speak to anyone at Nethercombe or to Elizabeth … Gillian's heartbeats jumped and raced. She could well imagine Lydia blurting something out in her unthinking way. Gillian looked round desperately. There was no telephone in the little house and the one in the shop-cum-bistro was rather public. Still …
 
LYDIA WAS AMAZED TO have a telephone call from her daughter and only when – having exclaimed and enquired – it was slowly borne in on her that Gillian's voice was full of a kind of muted desperation did Lydia stop chattering and begin to listen. She gathered that Gillian was in a public place and trying not to be overheard.
‘I want to come home, Mum,' she was saying and Lydia grasped the receiver more tightly, straining to hear. ‘It was all a terrible mistake and I want to come back.'
‘Oh, darling. D'you mean … ? When you say home … ?'
‘To Nethercombe.' It was almost a wail. ‘Oh Mum, I know Henry will take me back.' She dropped her voice. ‘Mum?'
Gillian was almost whispering and Lydia instinctively lowered her voice.
‘What? What is it?'
‘You haven't told anyone about Sam, have you?'
Lydia thought quickly. Had she? To whom would she have mentioned it?
‘No. I'm sure I haven't, darling. I haven't spoken to anyone at Nethercombe although Henry wrote a lovely letter. I told you – '
‘Yes. Yes, you said in your letter. Mum, don't say anything to anyone at all. Promise? I'll come to you first.'
‘Oh, darling, I'm so glad.' The ready tears were gathering. ‘I'm sure it's the right thing to do.'
‘I know. I'll be in touch again soon. Only, Mum, just don't mention Sam's name to anyone, OK? Not anyone.'
‘Of course not, my darling. I promise. Why should I?'
‘I'm out of change, Mum. I'll phone again soon when I've made some plans. ‘Bye.'
The line went dead and Lydia sat weeping with relief, the receiver clutched to her chest. She replaced it after a moment, feeling weak with gratitude, and wondering why Gillian had been so insistent that no one should know Sam's name. She went to pour herself a large and restorative drink, trying to remember what Sam's surname was and rather shocked by the fact that she had completely forgotten the name of the man with whom her daughter had run away. Lydia shook her head in self-reproach. She really was a hopeless mother. She took a large heartening swallow of gin and tonic and smiled a little to herself. Someone had said that to her only recently. Who could it have been? Lydia took another sip and nearly choked. Elizabeth! It had been Elizabeth. She had said something of the sort when she, Lydia, had told her how Gillian had left Henry and – Lydia screwed up her face as she performed an almost violent mental exercise – oh God! Yes! Elizabeth had asked, ‘Who's the man?' and she had told her. Yes! She was quite certain that she'd told her the name. But would she remember it? And did it matter if she did? After all, it was hardly likely that Elizabeth would go rolling up to Nethercombe and start chatting to Henry about Sam Whittaker. Still …
Lydia stood – clutching her glass as she had clutched the telephone receiver – in an agony of indecision. Should she tell Elizabeth, thus rousing all her suspicions, or should she let sleeping dogs lie and hope for the best? As she stood dithering, a saying which her mother had been fond of quoting slid into her mind.
‘Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive.'
 
TO GILLIAN THE DAY seemed endless. Pictures of John shot dead, Nell in an agony of childbirth, the funeral, rolled and rerolled themselves before her inward-looking eyes. She imagined Nell's desperation as she discovered that she was destitute and Jack's reaction at losing his father. Apparently, Henry and Gussie had taken them back to Nethercombe. There was, as Henry pointed out in his letter, nowhere else for them to go. It was almost as if it were an explanation to her, an apology. Perhaps he thought that she might be less likely to return if Nell were in residence. Gillian, aghast at the results of her double-dealing, lying and cheating, sat quite still. Part of her mind prayed that there might have been a mistake, some sort of misunderstanding that would exonerate Sam and, therefore, herself but in her heart she knew that this relief was unlikely to be granted to her.
When Sam arrived home later that afternoon she was ready for him but not prepared to discover that the revelations contained in Henry's letter had stripped the blindness from her eyes. The magic, the power, all had gone and she felt faint from her own stupidity. He kissed her and she willed herself not to shudder at his embrace.
‘How's my beautiful? Jim Mortlake was asking after you today. You made a very good impression on him, I must say. Things are going very well indeed.' He poured himself some wine and raised his glass to her. ‘You make an irresistible bait, my darling.'
‘You mean like I did with John?'
He looked at her, tilting his head a little, narrowing his eyes, as if sizing up the remark. He nodded. ‘If you like.'
‘How's it going? With John. Is the site coming on? Do you hear from him at all?'
‘Funny you should say that.' He emptied his glass in one long swallow and turned away to refill it. ‘I spoke to him today. He telephoned to tell me how things were getting on. No problems, as far as I can see.'
‘I can see quite a big problem.'
‘Oh?' He turned back to her, eyebrows raised. ‘Such as?'
‘Such as communicating from beyond the grave. However did he manage it?'
Sam gave a puzzled little laugh. He frowned at her smilingly and shook his head.
‘Sorry. Have I missed something? I'm not with it.'
‘Neither is he any more. He's dead. He shot himself when the site went to auction and Nell lost her baby and nearly died herself.'
Sam stood stock still, the expression wiped clean away from his face. Gillian knew that behind that unreadable smoothness his brain was working with the speed of lightning.
‘So?' she asked him. ‘Would you like to rephrase your answer?'
‘Where did you hear all this?'
‘I had a letter from Simon,' she lied. ‘John phoned him when he couldn't find you. The bank foreclosed and put the site up for auction but there was no money left for John. So he killed himself.'
‘More fool him.' Sam's handsome face was twisted with contempt. ‘What a bloody idiot.'
‘Is that all you've got to say?' Gillian hung on grimly to her calm. ‘Just that he was a bloody idiot?'
‘Only a fool would have been taken in like he was. Christ! He didn't even bother to get his solicitor to check things out. Honestly!'
‘And for that he deserved to die?' Gillian's temper was rising. ‘You lied to him and swindled him!' She was on her feet now. ‘You killed him, Sam! You might as well have pulled the trigger yourself before you left him in the shit!'
‘Oh no, I didn't!' He was beside her, his hands on her wrists. She
shrank from his touch and he shook her. ‘Don't look at me like that. What about you? Who wheedled him into it in the first place? Crawling all over him and leading him on? Oh, I know you! Just remember this! I'd never have met him if it hadn't been for you, wanting money to pay off your endless Barclaycards and bills. You killed him just as much as I did!'
She dragged her hands from his grasp with a moan and, sinking into a chair, buried her face in them. Sam watched her. His mind leaped to and fro; assessing, rejecting, calculating. He went to the table and refilled his glass and poured some wine for her.
‘Here.' He held it out to her. ‘Have a drink and don't be so stupid. I didn't kill John and neither did you.'
Gillian took her hands away from her tragic face and stared at him. He pushed the glass into her hand and she took it and then sipped automatically. He nodded and took a deep breath as though a dangerous corner had been successfully negotiated and, sitting beside her, took her other hand. It lay limp and lifeless in his as she stared back at him.
‘John killed John,' he said gently. ‘Not me or you. John killed himself because he was a loser, a non-achiever. He'd never done anything or got anywhere and he couldn't stand the idea of it any longer. Someone like John hasn't got a hope in hell in this economic climate. He didn't have to accept my offer, did he? No sensible bloke would have chucked away all he'd got on a chance like that.'
BOOK: The Courtyard
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