The House of Women (28 page)

‘
Was he? Oh, dear!’ Sinking into a chair, she rummaged in her pocket for cigarettes, and as McKenna offered his own, said: ‘I do hope he’s not getting silly with age.’

‘
Maybe he’s got the feline version of BSE,’ Phoebe offered, pouring tea into three mugs.

‘
Don’t be so ridiculous!’ Edith snapped. ‘You and Annie are obsessed with this BSE thing!’

‘
With Auntie Gertrude around, it’s hard not to be.’

Drawing hard on her cigarette, hands trembling, Edith said:
‘Did Ned say Gertrude had human BSE?’

‘
No.’ Phoebe put the mugs on the table. ‘He said she was always a bit more odd than the rest of them.’

‘
Quite.’ She knocked ash from her cigarette, and turned to McKenna. ‘Did Gladys tell you what happened to her sister?’

‘
Not really. Annie told me about the little girl who died.’

‘
She was called Louisa,’ Phoebe stated. ‘I’ve seen her grave. She died from consumption.’

‘
TB,’ Edith said, irritation in her voice. ‘And it’s not in the least romantic, the way novels pretend. That child had a savage, lingering death, and it turned poor Gertrude’s mind. She’s the way she is because of grief and guilt and family weakness, and not because of anything else.’

Phoebe sat down, wafting away the cigarette smoke. The cat jumped on her lap, nuzzled her bare arm and made her smile, while Edith talked on.
‘I do wonder if we weave stories around the realities simply to make them less horrific and more palatable. Gertrude’s had a dreadful life, very little of it her own doing.’

‘
Uncle Ned said once somebody has bad luck, they can expect more,’ Phoebe offered, ‘because they’re being pursued by the world of the dead.’

‘“
Uncle Ned said” is like a mantra for you, isn’t it?’ Edith commented. ‘And it rhymes with dead. And I’m not being nasty,’ she added, as Phoebe’s face threatened to crumple into misery. ‘I was making an observation.’ Drawing on her cigarette, she turned again to McKenna. ‘Gertrude was a real beauty in her youth, you know.’ As he thought of the human wreck he had kept company with the day before, she went on: ‘And she was bright too, even though she was given to flights of fancy at times. With that, and the family’s money, she could have taken her pick of the local gentry.’ She paused to drink. ‘Everyone expected her life to go from one good thing to something better.’ Glancing at her daughter, she added: ‘And you can stop rolling your eyes like that. All most parents want for their children is peace and happiness, in that order, as you might discover one day.’ Then she asked McKenna: ‘Was your father in the war? Gertrude’s father was exempt from call-up because of the farm, and I’ve always had the impression they felt the walls of Llys Ifor would protect them from the destruction that touched other families, even in that neck of the woods. Some of the village men never came back from the war, and of course, several people were maimed by the stuff they handled at the explosives factory.’ Rather abruptly, she stopped speaking, and looked at him, a hectic quality in her eyes. ‘D’you want to hear all this? I don’t know how long you’ve been waiting, but Phoebe’s probably exhausted you already.’

‘
Please, go on,’ McKenna said, smiling.

‘
You can’t stop now,’ Phoebe insisted. ‘You’ve never told me about Auntie Gertrude before.’

‘
Because it’s not really our business,’ Edith said. ‘I’m telling you now to stop this BSE nonsense.’ She paused again. ‘During the war, there was an internment camp near Bala, like the one on the Isle of Man. Enemy aliens and conscientious objectors were sent there, and later, a few prisoners of war. Gladys says the government stockpiled poison gas in the mountains, too.’

‘
It’s probably still there,’ commented Phoebe, ‘leaking. That’s why so many people have cancer.’

Edith stared at her.
‘You could be right, actually, but no-one will ever admit to it.’ She sighed. ‘The internees had to work for their keep, and in 1942, a young Italian prisoner of war was sent to the farm. Ned said he was like a latter-day slave.’

When she paused again, to draw breath and tobacco smoke into her lungs, Phoebe touched her arm.
‘Go on, Mama. What happened?’

‘
Gladys remembers him well, even though they couldn’t say much to each other. In those days, she could hardly speak English, and he obviously couldn’t speak Welsh.’

‘
How old was he?’ Phoebe demanded, hugging the cat. ‘Was he handsome?’

‘
I don’t know how old he was, and I don’t know if he was handsome, but Gladys says she found him sweet and very kind.’

‘
What was he called?’

‘
Luigi. Luigi Gianniazzi. He and Gertrude fell head over heels in love with each other, and when her father found out, he told the authorities.’ She ground out her cigarette. ‘So Luigi disappeared, and Gertrude never saw him again. She tried to find him after the war, but nobody would tell her anything.’

‘
Oh, what a wicked thing to do!’ Phoebe said. ‘She must have really
hated
her father.’

‘
He was trying to protect her from her own wilfulness. She had no future with someone from an enemy country, as Luigi was then, and no-one could possibly know at the time how the war would end.’

‘
It’s still awful.’ Phoebe snivelled, her tears making the cat flinch as they dripped on to his back.

‘
There was worse to come,’ Edith added. ‘Gertrude was pregnant, and when the people in the village found out, they called her a wanton. She became a virtual prisoner in Llys Ifor.’

‘
They were wicked, too!’ Phoebe said through her tears.

‘
Were they?’ Edith wondered. ‘I don’t know. They felt cheated and deceived. Gertrude’s hopes and prospects didn’t only belong to her, you know, and with a baby on the way, she had neither.’

‘
Is that why you went ballistic when Annie was pregnant?’ asked Phoebe. ‘Were you scared of history repeating itself?’

‘
Something like that, yes.’ Edith nodded, her eyes darting from her daughter to her visitor. ‘And I wish you’d extend your vocabulary a little. Ballistic is one of your “words of the month”, isn’t it? Still, I suppose it’s an improvement on the other one, although I’ve yet to decipher what apeshit actually means.’

Phoebe blushed, and while McKenna stifled a laugh, Edith rattled on.
‘I don’t think the past will lose the power to hurt as long as Gertrude draws breath, but Gladys probably won’t mind if you talk about it occasionally.’ She reached for another cigarette. ‘She’d probably show you the wooden chest Luigi made for Gertrude. He must have been very clever with his hands because it’s almost a work of art, carved all over with the kind of shapes and patterns you find in old Italian churches.’

‘
What’s in it?’ Phoebe asked.

‘
Keepsakes, I suppose. Perhaps even love tokens and letters, and I think that’s where Gladys put Louisa’s little clothes after she died.’ She smiled at her own daughter, and ruffled her hair. ‘You know those two caskets of Uncle Ned’s? Luigi made those from a big branch which came off one of the oak trees in the field during a storm.’ She fell silent, chewing her bottom lip. ‘We really must see about sorting out Ned’s things, and I’m sure he made a will, even though nobody knows where it is. We’ll have to ask Gladys about the books, because George wants to carry on with Ned’s work if possible.’

‘
How d’you know?’ McKenna enquired.

‘
I saw him when I walked up from town,’ Edith said. ‘I noticed him from quite a long way off. He does rather stand out from the crowd, doesn’t he? And not because he’s black, although we don’t see many black people around here for some strange reason. Anyway, we had quite a pleasant chat, which is why I was so long. I’m so glad you had the sense to let him go.’

‘
You didn’t tell me!’ Phoebe wailed. ‘Why didn’t you?’

‘
I’m sorry,’ McKenna said. ‘It slipped my mind.’

‘
Don’t speak to Mr McKenna like that. I expect you’ve been talking so much he couldn’t get a word in.’ Smiling gently to take the sting from her words, Edith added: ‘I think he wants to talk to me, so perhaps you could find something to do for a while.’

‘
Like what?’ Phoebe asked, her mouth drawn down at the corners. ‘There’s nothing to do. I’m bored.’

‘
Thank goodness you’ll be old enough to have a summer job next year,’ Edith commented. ‘These long school holidays are a trial for everyone.’

‘
I wasn’t bored when Uncle Ned was alive,’ Phoebe stated.

‘
I know, child. And I know you miss him. Why don’t you go over to George’s? I’m sure he’d be glad to see you.’

‘
This is weird!’ Phoebe announced. ‘One day you hate him, the next you’re falling over yourself to be nice about him.’

‘
I’m allowed to revise my opinions. I’ve probably been very unfair to him in the past.’

‘
Maybe you’ve realized he’s not after Minnie.’

‘
And perhaps my head isn’t so full of funny feelings,’ Edith countered. ‘Just go and find yourself something to do, and don’t be late back for tea. And don’t lock that poor animal out of the house again,’ she called, as Phoebe trudged into the hall, the cat at her heels. ‘Shut the front door if you don’t trust him not to wander into the road.’

Stubbing out her half-smoked cigarette, she glanced at McKenna.
‘Do you ever worry about getting cancer? I’m scared already, and I’ve never touched cigarettes before. I don’t like the taste or the smell, and they make my throat terribly raw.’

He shrugged.
‘I’m addicted, I suppose, like millions of other self-medicating depressives, including Professor Williams.’ He watched her hands, trembling and jerking of their own volition. ‘Phoebe told me he’s coming to dinner, but I wondered if you’d cancel the visit.’

‘
Why?’

He rose to shut the kitchen door, in case their voices carried up the stairs as Edith said sounds travelled through the house.
‘I want to discuss some things with him later.’

‘
What things?’

‘
Things arising in the course of our inquiries. I spoke to Margaret Williams earlier.’

‘
How nice for you! I’m sure she made you
most
welcome!’

‘
She told me she regrets her differences with you.’

‘
Wasn’t that kind of her!’ Edith’s eyes were alight. ‘And I’m sure that wasn’t all she told you, was it?’

‘
You must have known I’d find out, sooner or later.’ McKenna’s voice was gentle.

‘
Of course I knew! It’s been eating me up with worry, like rats in my belly! Why d’you think I asked you to respect our privacy?’

‘
I’ll do everything I can to protect your privacy, but I don’t know what might be relevant to Ned’s death.’

‘
All I ask of you,’ she said, her voice straining with grief, ‘is that you don’t let Phoebe and Annie find out about Mina. They don’t need to, and they’d judge her. She’d become an outcast like Gertrude, and they find her wanting enough already, as if they know she’s a changeling without being told.’

‘
Aren’t you afraid they’d judge you, too?’

‘
I’m beyond that sort of care, Mr McKenna.’ She snatched a cigarette from the pack. ‘Too many others came to push it aside, and I’ve spent too many years being weak and miserable, savouring the unhappiness I made for myself. If my daughters don’t already despise me for what that took from them, they won’t despise me for the cause of it all.’ Lighting the cigarette, she said: ‘I’ve felt very strange since Ned died, you know, as if the shackles around my personality are corroding and falling apart. I think I’m beginning to mean something to myself again.’

‘
Phoebe says you’ve become more real.’

‘
She’s told me all about you, or at least, what she could find out from that young policeman,’ she said, wedging her cigarette in the dip in the ashtray. ‘I know you’ve no children of your own, but I’m sure you can understand the bereavements parents suffer as children grow up and go out into the world. I love each of my daughters equally and differently, and each relationship is different. I’m very close to Annie, and more perhaps since she had Bethan, because there’s no-one else with a claim to them, but it’s rather two grown women together than mother and daughter.’ She clasped her hands together, jailing the twitching fingers. ‘As I said, I love them all, but I know the greatest bereavement will come when Phoebe leaves.’

‘
Because she’ll leave you with an empty nest?’

‘
Because she’s never belonged to anyone but herself, and because of whatever it is that Ned saw in her and nurtured, when I was too wrapped up in myself to notice. You and George recognize the same thing, and it’s what made her teacher so spiteful, and what so frightens Mina.’