The Heroes' Welcome (25 page)

‘Julia,’ she called, softly.

Julia gazed at the grey sky, unmoved.

Nadine lifted her finger, and the eyelid drifted very slowly down over the clouded blue. It was so slow in its settling, drowsy almost – but inanimate. Passive. The skin, as thin as a mouse’s ear, seemed already to be drying out. Closed, it lay settled like a snowdrift at the end of a storm.

Nadine held Julia’s hand, and turned her head to look at Peter. He met her gaze, but
dear God, his eyes are almost as empty as hers …
She held her look steady, trying to hold him. He was grey-skinned and gaunt, and looked twenty years older.

‘What happened?’ she whispered.

He shook his head.

She reached over to him and took his hand: warm, alive, beautiful. ‘Peter,’ she said. ‘Oh, Peter. Oh my – Peter,’ she said, and she moved over and sat very close beside him; he was terribly thin. She huddled next to his coat, bringing his arm to put it round her narrow shoulder. ‘Dear Peter,’ she said. ‘Poor Julia. Oh dear. Oh, God. Oh dear.’

It was very quiet out there. Peaceful. The world seemed far away.

The baby!
she thought suddenly.
Tom—

She expected this thought to bring a flood of duty, fuss and horror down on her, but it didn’t, not yet. There was instead a calm estrangement.
Is it because we are outside? Is it like the war? Are we reverting to war reactions? No children in the war. Not little ones. No newborns in the trenches.
The observation floated off again.

‘Peter?’ she whispered. ‘Will you come in now?’ He shook his head again, a quick sudden jerk of fear and horror – so she kissed his forehead, bending over to him, and squeezed his hand, and whispered, ‘I’ll be back in a moment …’

Mrs Joyce, at the French windows, had been staring for a good five minutes. As Nadine came running in from the frost in her nightclothes, Mrs Joyce stood mute. There was blood on the carpet all across the sitting room. They saw it now, a trail across the carpet, extra red petals on the Aubusson.

Nadine said: ‘No, wait.’ She didn’t want even to close the French windows behind her. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I need to think …’

Mrs Joyce stood, muffled up in a pink quilted dressing gown. Her hands were up over her face.

‘She’s dead,’ said Nadine. ‘It’s all blood.’

Mrs Joyce gasped.

‘Major Locke doesn’t want to come in yet, so perhaps we should take him a cup of tea. It’s awfully cold,’ Nadine said. ‘You should have one too. And yes, me too.’

‘I’ll make tea, then,’ said Mrs Joyce.

‘Let’s just – yes,’ said Nadine. She thought, carefully, counting and remembering to breathe. ‘Tea.’ She looked up helplessly.

‘The children …?’ Mrs Joyce asked.

‘Mrs Joyce, don’t telephone the doctor yet. I’ll look at the children. You put the kettle on,’ said Nadine.

‘I’ll be in the kitchen,’ said Mrs Joyce. ‘Millie is still asleep.’

‘I’m going upstairs,’ Nadine said.

Everything needed placing.

It all seemed to be a terrible inversion of the day before.

Max was barking in the back hall. ‘I’ll feed him,’ said Mrs Joyce.

‘Thank you.’ said Nadine. She took the stairs very slowly. Her heart was too big in her chest to allow room for breath. Her legs weren’t working well.

Tom was asleep in the nursery; angelic.

In Julia’s room the velvet chair was on its side, the water carafe spilt, the sheets dark with blood, and tangled.

What had happened?

The baby, in her crib at the bottom of Julia’s bed, uttered the tiniest noise, like a creak, or a mouse, peaceful, scarcely human. Nadine went to her and picked her up, very gently. The baby didn’t wake, just made her tiny noises as Nadine wrapped the shawl around her, and tucked her into the crook of her arm. Tiny eyelids fluttered. Unfocused blue eyes beneath.

Unfocused blue eyes.

Nadine carried the baby down to the kitchen.

‘Could you ask Eliza to dress Tom,’ she said, ‘and then if you could take them all into town, please, Mrs Joyce. When he wakes.’ Her thoughts were in the wrong order. ‘Not now.’

‘I don’t want to leave you alone here, Mrs Purefoy,’ Mrs Joyce said.

Nadine said, ‘I won’t be alone. Peter’s here.’

Mrs Joyce put her head a little to one side, as if to say, ‘And?’

‘I’m going to telephone my husband now,’ Nadine said. She could barely speak.

‘Shall I take Kitty?’ Mrs Joyce said, but Nadine shook her head. She let Mrs Joyce come and look at her, though, gazing and clucking. Mrs Joyce said, after a long moment, ‘I’ll bring you your tea to the telephone.’

Nadine said, ‘Thank you,’ and in this infinitesimally careful way the two women proceeded.
No surprises. Nothing fast or unexpected.

*

Riley didn’t usually pick up the phone. But it was so early. He’d know it was her.
Answer – answer.

What came out was: ‘Julia’s dead.’

‘Did he kill her?’ Riley asked, straight off.

Her relief at his straightforwardness gave her voice: ‘No,’ she said, and her breath roared through her, followed so swiftly by the thought:
How can I say that? I don’t know. That’s loyalty and affection talking, not an open mind
. ‘I mean – no – her nightdress – the blood is all – um … There’s no reason to think that …’

‘Who have you rung? Who is there?’

‘Mrs Joyce and I,’ she said. Breathe. ‘I rang you first. She’s making tea.’ Breathe. ‘She’ll take Tom out. I am just here. I have the baby.’

‘And has he said anything?’

‘No. But Riley, darling – they’re in the garden! He’s smeared his face. With mud, I think. He’s been crying.’ Her voice was rising with imminent tears. ‘I don’t know why they’re in the garden!’

‘I’ll take your father’s car,’ Riley said. ‘Hold fast. Do nothing. Lock yourself in the house if you feel you should.’

It was still so early.
Grey milk sky. Them, out there. Us, in here. What has happened?

*

She went upstairs again, carrying Kitty. Tom was sleeping sound. She stilled the urge to wake him and hug him, came down again and sat on the sofa. Kitty was tiny in her arms. She found she was rocking gently: something automatic in her was responding to the scrap of life in her arms.

When Julia wanted to feed the baby. When she smiled at Peter across the bed, so tired and a little sheepish, so sweet – and he smiled back. That moment.

The fireplace was cold and ashy. She wanted to make a fire but she found she physically could not put the baby down
. But without a fire the whole house is dead.
Julia is dead.

Where’s Millie?
She’d need to tell Millie. She should go and do that. The girls shouldn’t see this.

She dozed off. Woke again, totally confused, thinking,
He didn’t kill her.
She was certain of that. But she had not been surprised when Riley asked, and Riley had not been surprised that she had not been surprised,
and that said something, didn’t it?

I had thought people had stopped dying. Even when Mama died. And now …

After a while Mrs Joyce put her head around the drawing-room door.

‘Tom is up and dressed,’ she said. ‘He’s had some bread and milk, and we’re going into town now. Would you like me to take the baby?’

How are they meant to live through this? Peter? These children?

‘Too cold,’ said Nadine. ‘Too soon. Too new.’ She was not yet a day old. She had not even fed yet.

‘You’ve no fire!’ Mrs Joyce said. She made it up, swiftly and effectively. ‘I told Millie to stay in the kitchen. I’ll bring some goat’s milk,’ she said. ‘It’s best. Mrs Paine has a nanny goat. I won’t tell anyone what for.’

Nadine mouthed ‘thank you’ to her.

‘Tom likes the goat,’ Mrs Joyce said. And, ‘If I were you, I’d call Dr Tayle now.’

‘My husband is on his way,’ Nadine said. Mrs Joyce nodded, and went. Nadine did not want the doctor. If the doctor came it would be true.

Nadine couldn’t even put the baby down for long enough to make a proper sling to carry her in. She just sort of pulled at the cloth, wedging it in order to be able to tie it. In the end the baby was slung across her chest like a peasant child, or a foreign one. She did not want her to be unheld even for a moment. She did not want her to be alone in any way.

The fire was burning now, stuttering and breathing. Nadine stood, pushing herself up, though the child weighed practically nothing. She went to the French windows. The tableau was unchanged: lawn, the slope, the two figures at the end. She could see the tiny orange dot of Peter’s cigarette. It was impossible.

For a moment she wanted to rush out and check. Perhaps they
were
just having some astonishing picnic.

*

The hall clock had struck nine when the doorbell went. Not Mrs Joyce; she had only gone fifteen minutes before; she had a key and would come in round the back. Not Riley – too soon. Nadine felt a flash of panic.
Who? What could she say? What if they called the police or tried to take Julia away?
She thought about hiding until they left.

Shuffling outside, and a cough. Dr Tayle.

Of course he’d make a routine visit.

Well.

Nadine let him in. He said obvious things. ‘Ah, giving Mother a rest, are we? Good, good. And how is our new arrival?’

What am I to say to him?
Her nursing experience was giving her nothing. Of all the things she had dealt with, that she had not been equipped to deal with …
but that was meant to be over there. Not here. And not now. It’s meant to be over.

The doctor was making for the stairs.

‘Please wait in the study, doctor,’ she said, and her voice sounded all wrong to her. He went in, a little puzzled, but not very. Nadine went and sat at the kitchen table, and thought:
When is this going to be over?
Her tea stood cold on the hall table by the telephone.

Then she went back to the doctor, wishing he were a thousand miles away, and that he would leave them alone. But she couldn’t ask him to go. She understood that. It would be wrong. Reality, of its nature, was going to intrude.

‘Mrs Locke is in the garden,’ Nadine said. ‘Perhaps you’d follow me.’

He followed her, huffing surprise and disapproval. ‘She should be in bed! She needs to rest! Far too cold to be up and about outside, really …’

But then he caught sight of the mad tableau at the end of the lawn, and the sight propelled him forward, urgency catching at him like a flurry of wind at a dead leaf.

Peter glanced up as the doctor blew towards him. Said nothing. Nadine, following, stood back.

Dr Tayle was saying, ‘What – what – we must get her indoors. We must get her indoors.’ He let out a little grunt as he collapsed to kneel at her side. ‘Come on, man. Help me. Take her feet.’

Peter drew on his cigarette, and closed his eyes, and said, sadly, ‘Oh come, come, Doctor. This is a perfectly good place to be dead …’ And then the doctor leaned back, and turned grey, and seemed suddenly as much at a loss as everybody else.

Nadine thought:
If she were in her bed, it would be completely different. It would be a tragedy but now it is a farce as well. Or …
She went to where Peter sat, and knelt down with him, his bloodied coat, his cold white hands. She laid her fingers on his arm.

‘What happened here?’ Dr Tayle was saying. ‘Major Locke …’

Peter let him look at Julia. He stared at the doctor like a dog all the while he took her nonexistent pulse, felt her dead belly, looked at the spread and amount of blood. He would not let him move her. Dr Tayle tried to persuade him, mentioned decency and things like that. There was a horrible moment when the doctor’s sense of propriety seemed to overcome him, and he took hold of Julia’s shoulders, and seemed to be about to try to pull her up and carry her himself, and Peter roared. Nadine feared some horrid foolish physical squabble was about to break out over the body, pulling and grabbing – but the doctor backed down. He took a vast handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his brow.

‘Major Locke,’ he said, ‘you know it’s a criminal offence to prevent burial of a body?’

And Peter smiled and replied mildly, ‘Well, she’s only been a body for a few hours. Is there not a transition period, during which she can still be my wife, while I get used to the idea that she is my dead wife and once again the corpses rule?’

The doctor said, ‘You need to come inside too, Major Locke. It’s too cold out here.’ But that was nothing new to Peter. He stared until the doctor finally turned away.

Inside, Dr Tayle wanted to see the bedroom. He followed the trail up, and down again. Nadine put a log on the fire in the drawing room, cuddled Kitty close, and left him to it. It occurred to her, as she tended the fire, that the wild smearings on Peter’s face were not tears and mud, but ash.

Dr Tayle came back down. He seemed lost – to be looking around for a man to speak to, some other head-of-the-household figure. There being none, he spoke to Nadine. ‘I believe it was a haemorrhage. Alas. It’s not unusual, God preserve us – women die like that all too often, God preserve us. There needs to be a proper examination and under the circumstances another doctor should – see her – but nothing could have been done. Nothing could be done. There’s no sign of anything other than haemorrhage.’

Relief?

‘But it’s not my decision.’

Ah.

‘And the police must be informed.’

Silence. Her heart pounded strong and her thought was simple:
No.

Why? Because you think he could have?

‘But there’s no wound?’ she said quietly, after a moment.

‘Would you have expected it?’ he said, frowning, looking at her. He said it very carefully. Each of them knew that the other was thinking:
Peter was strange last night.

‘
Not at all,’ she said.

‘I saw no sign of any wound,’ he said. ‘I was not able to give a full examination. But I do not expect to find any wound. If that is of any comfort. But procedures must be followed. And it is unusual that she should be in the garden.’