didn’t think he would strike me, but there was still that well of anger in him I’d sensed the instant he’d come into the sitting room shortly after I’d arrived yesterday. It had been most noticeable when he’d argued with his mother over George’s presence. I had no idea what might set it off again in an explosion of violence.
“I’d like to know the details,” he told me, his voice tight.
It suddenly occurred to me what he was asking. “Did you think she went to hospital with that bruise on her face? I’d have advised it, if I’d seen her just after you struck her. The bones around the eye socket are thin. The truth is, I’ve just come home from France. She was waiting for me on my doorstep. Quite literally.”
That stopped him. He turned to look at me and nearly ran the motorcar into a ditch.
“You’re blunt.”
“Yes, I am. You doubt me, you have from the moment you met me, without even waiting to find out if you were justified. I’m a guest in your house, Mr. Ellis, and I do understand that you’ve recently lost your only brother. It’s a time of mourning, and I’m not a member of the family. I don’t wish to be rude, but I think it would be better for Lydia and your mother if we could at least find a way to be civil to each other.”
“I’d like to tell you my side of the story,” he said after a moment. “Will you listen?”
“Of course.” I took a deep breath. “But I must ask you something first. Do you trust your wife, Mr. Ellis? Or is there someone you think she might have gone to, hurt and afraid as she was, and in need of comfort?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he snapped.
“Yet you stayed here in Sussex, didn’t you? She was terrified that you’d followed her to London. She even thought you’d asked the police to hunt her down. She was terrified that you’d be on our doorstep before she could face you again. And she wasn’t at all sure how that meeting would be, or even how you’d receive her. Instead you never really searched for her, did you? Even when you knew she must be somewhere in this wilderness, alone and cold and hurt-physically and emotionally. I wonder why.”
“All right,” he said, goaded. “There was a man she met while I was in France. He lives not far from here. I found out about him quite by accident. He’s blind, you see, shrapnel fragments that scarred his face and took his sight. She went often to read to him. So I was told. It occurred to me that he was here, I was in France, and she was lonely.”
I could have laughed. I hadn’t anticipated jealousy. “Have you met this man?”
“Has she told you about him?” he countered.
“No. Why should she? She came to London because she was afraid. Of you. Of the future. If there had been something between your wife and this man, she would have turned to him. Instead she came to me.”
He digested that for a moment, his eyes on the road. “I shouldn’t have doubted her,” he said finally.
“Did you think that the reason she wanted a child was to hide the fact that she was already pregnant?”
“Yes. All right. It was the first thing that crossed my mind.” His voice was cold, harsh.
“Then you don’t know your wife very well, do you? Or you’d recognize her need for what it is, her love for you.”
“I don’t want children. Now or ever. I don’t want to watch them suffer and die. There’s no more helpless feeling, I can tell you. I watched as my own father walked out into the heath and killed himself because the child he loved best was dead. I don’t want to see my wife grieve for one dead child when she has three living children, as my mother did for many years. I see no reason to put myself or Lydia through that nightmare. I won’t.”
Which explained a good deal about Roger Ellis. I wondered if he and Lydia had ever really discussed having children in a quiet and reasonable fashion, or if their feelings were too shut away for them to explain to each other just how they felt.
I also found myself wondering if somewhere, sometime Roger Ellis had strayed, and if this was why he was so ready to believe his wife had been unfaithful.
He answered one of my questions. “We were married in 1913. In the autumn. It was the happiest I’d been for longer than I could remember. Barely a year later the war started, and I enlisted at once. I couldn’t wait to get to France, fool that I was. Lydia begged me to wait and see whether it would last, but I promised her I’d be home again before she knew it. Instead I didn’t see her for three years. We wrote, of course, but it wasn’t the same. And I knew she was angry with me for lying to her. But I hadn’t, I’d really believed that the war would end before I saw any of the fighting. I wouldn’t have blamed her for looking elsewhere.”
A silence fell between us, and then Roger Ellis said, “I never heard her mention your name before yesterday. Why hadn’t she said something to me in a letter about having seen you in London-or asked me if I’d had word of you in France? She asks often enough about our neighbors’ sons and brothers, you’d think she’d have been concerned about you as well. I asked Daisy, but she didn’t recall mail coming for my wife with your return address on it.”
I knew the anxiety of waiting for news. I’d asked about mutual friends whenever I’d run into someone I knew.
“What did you think? That she had made up our friendship, simply because you can’t find a letter from me in her desk? I expect you looked last night, didn’t you?” I said. “If you’re trying to convince yourself that there was a conspiracy of silence involved, then perhaps I should ask you why it is that you are willing to believe the worst of me as well as your wife? If you must know, your father was once friends with mine. Or so your mother has told me.”
He shot a look at me, as if trying to decide if I was telling the truth.
“Ask her,” I said shortly.
And I had a feeling he would not.
We drove on without speaking, and I looked out across the barren world of the heath, at the sheep grazing where kings once hunted, and a line of cows meandering toward a distant meadow, lined up as if in a queue. The weather seemed even grimmer and colder here. It was such a cheerless place to live. Even the deserts of Rajasthan were full of life, and the vast stretches of Egypt’s Western Desert for all its endless sand offered more to the eye than the stunted branches of gorse and heather and twisted scrub.
We came into Hartfield, the bustling life of its main street a welcomed sight. I saw the doctor’s gate as we passed. A line of pretty cottages along the high street caught my eye. The rain was finally coming down in a fine mist. Ignoring it, women went about their marketing, pushing prams, pausing to gossip on a corner, while men, black umbrellas shielding their faces, strode purposefully toward their destinations. Roger Ellis gestured toward his right. “There’s The King’s Head. They have a telephone. I’ll leave the motorcar in the yard, shall I, and meet you here in half an hour. Will that do?”
“Yes, thank you.” The inn stood at the far end of town, on the corner of a street that led up to a church. A tall black and white building with small-paned windows, it boasted a large sign with a crowned head that appeared to be Charles I with his narrow face, pointed beard, and long dark locks.
As Roger Ellis brought the vehicle to a stop, I noticed the small house just across from us. It was painted a very pleasing shade of blue. There was a sign hanging on the white gate in front of the tiny garden. A painted border of flowers framed the words BLUEBELL COTTAGE. A ginger cat lay curled up in the window next to the door, asleep on a cushion the same color.
Roger Ellis saw the direction of my gaze. “Pretty, isn’t it?”
“Yes, very much so,” I replied and was on the point of turning toward the inn.
His voice stopped me. It was flat, without emotion, but I sensed the effort he’d needed to keep it that way.
“Her blind officer lives there. In Bluebell Cottage,” he said, and walked away, leaving me standing in the middle of the inn yard.
Chapter Four
I spoke to my mother, who pretended that she wasn’t disappointed that I wasn’t coming home directly. I explained my situation as best I could-the telephone was in a cranny without a door, and I knew that anyone passing or standing in Reception just around the corner could hear every word-and I asked if she’d forgive me for putting Lydia first.
“Yes, of course I will. But when were you invited? I didn’t quite understand?”
