“Yes, all right. One night. As long as you agree to see that doctor.”
“Bess, you won’t regret it. I promise you. And the sooner the better. I shan’t be able to sleep now, thinking about tomorrow. Are you quite sure?”
It was the only solution that I could see to the problem of what to do about Lydia. It set me free to go on to Somerset, and I could leave her in Sussex, secure in the knowledge that she had returned safely to her family. I was sure Simon wouldn’t approve, but tomorrow morning I could explain to him why I’d made this decision, and arrange to have him meet me in London on my return. After all, Lydia had told him who her husband was, and where she lived. It wasn’t as if I were going off with a complete stranger to an unknown destination.
And if I had any reason to believe that Lydia had made the wrong choice, if her husband refused to take her back, then she could come with me to Somerset until she could decide what she ought to do next.
Her happiness at having the decision to return to Vixen Hill taken out of her hands was obvious. For her sake, I hoped that her faith in Roger Ellis was justified.
I said, “There’s one thing I’d like to ask you, if you don’t mind. Who is Juliana?”
At first I didn’t think she was going to tell me. And then she said, “Juliana? She’s Roger’s sister.”
Chapter Two
The next morning, I looked for Simon to return, but as the time sped on, I realized that it was likely I’d miss him. But where was he? What had held him up?
I wrote a hasty note and left it with Mrs. Hennessey, and then there was nothing for it but to find a cab to take us to the railway station. I even looked over my shoulder before we turned the corner, to see if Simon’s motorcar was in sight.
The train was crowded, as usual, and Lydia and I had difficulty finding two seats together. She was embarrassed that I had to pay for her ticket, but she promised to see that I was recompensed as soon as she reached Vixen Hill.
I said as we pulled out of the station into the misting rain, “Won’t it be awkward-a guest arriving without any warning? Perhaps we should have sent a telegram. After all, your family is in mourning.”
“I’d considered that, but I think it will be best just to walk in without fanfare. And Roger will very likely be as grateful as I am for your presence. There’s the awkwardness, you see, of meeting for the first time. I have no idea what to say-or what he’ll do. It’s so difficult to know, isn’t it?”
She’d persuaded herself that my presence would make all well again. But I had my doubts. Quarrels were not always settled so easily-or so amicably. Roger Ellis could see her flight to London as a more serious infraction than his blow. I was beginning to see that Simon was right, this was a more complicated business than I’d foreseen. Mainly because Lydia herself was far more uncertain than I’d realized.
“Are you sure,” I asked, “that this is the right thing to do? Perhaps we should have waited another day until you’re more comfortable with returning. It would be simple enough to get down at the next stop.”
“Oh, no, I want to put it behind me as quickly as possible.”
We talked for some time after that, exchanging information to make it appear more likely that she’d known me for some time.
“Wasn’t it difficult,” she asked at one point, “to work with badly wounded men? I know how distressing it was to care for Alan in his last days. Roger was wounded, you know. In the shoulder. He never told us, and it mustn’t have been severe, because he wasn’t sent back to England.” She bit her lip. “It was George who mentioned it. He’s a friend of the family. He’d run into Roger in France. But I hadn’t seen Roger for three years. Not until he came home because of Alan. And he treated me like a stranger. As if he couldn’t remember those months before the war when we were so happy.”
“War does change people,” I pointed out. “And of course there was his brother.”
“Yes, I know,” she said wistfully. “I shouldn’t have pressed. But I wanted so badly to have a child. Someone to love, if-if the worst happens. That’s what we quarreled about, you see.” She touched her face. “The hurt went deeper than the blow. That’s why I couldn’t stay at Vixen Hill.”
This was the truth, finally.
“We are a house of widows,” she went on. “For all intents and purposes these last three years, I have been one as well. Roger’s mother and his grandmother live with us, and I could see that their children have been their salvation. He may never come back from France, once he leaves. This could be our only chance.”
“Was Alan married? Did he have children?”
“He was married, yes. But he and Eleanor had no children. And neither do Margaret and Henry. She’s Roger’s sister, she lives near Canterbury.”
“And Juliana?”
“No. Of course not.”
She was silent for a time. Then she said, “Sometimes I think they’re cursed. Margaret and Alan and Roger. Mama Ellis told me once that Juliana’s death was devastating. It scarred all of them. Roger’s father couldn’t accept it. He tried, but in the end he went out into the heath and shot himself.”
I was shocked. “She’s dead?” It was all I could manage to say.
“She died when she was only six years old. Of a mastoid tumor. Roger won’t speak her name. It’s as if she never existed. He was closer to her in age than Margaret and Alan. Alan, when he came of age, turned Vixen Hill over to Roger. He felt he couldn’t live there, and he bought a house in Portsmouth before joining the Navy as a career officer. Margaret married young. I think to escape. Although it turned out well enough. She and Henry have been very happy.”
“Did you-were you told these things before you married Roger Ellis?” I asked.
“I told myself I’d make Roger forget Juliana. But you can’t really change people, can you? We took a house in London for the first six months, and then I could tell that he missed Vixen Hill. Alan could walk away, you see, but Roger couldn’t. And so we returned to Sussex.” Putting a hand to her head, she said, “I wish this pounding would stop.”
I didn’t remind her about her promise.
We pulled into a station at that juncture, and in the flurry of people getting down or settling into seats, conversation was impossible. Lydia closed her eyes, and I thought she slept for a quarter of an hour or so.
We reached the station just outside of Hartfield in the early afternoon. I was glad, for the train was stuffy and so crowded we could hardly hear ourselves think. I said, as Lydia and I stepped down into a small station hardly worthy of the name, “How far is it to Vixen Hill?”
“Not far, as the crow flies,” she said, handing in our tickets. “There’s a carriage we can hire to take us there. I was so fortunate the day I left-a neighbor was on her way to Hartfield to do her marketing, and she was willing to take me to the station. I wouldn’t have wanted to walk-I’d have missed my train for one thing. But I would have walked, you know. I was that desperate to get away.”
We found the carriage without any trouble, and the driver, an elderly man with a foul-smelling pipe, was more than willing to take us to Vixen Hill. We were soon on our way through the village of Hartfield. It was prosperous enough, with cottages and houses leading into a street of shops and an inn. I could see the tower of a church up a side street, and farther along, I glimpsed the doctor’s shingle on a house facing a small shop selling dry goods.
Several people turned to stare, but I thought that had more to do with the fact that I was a stranger than with Lydia’s bruised face and blackened eye. Still, she kept her gloved hand raised, as if to keep her hat from blowing off.
I heard her murmur, “I knew this would be an ordeal.”
“It will be over soon. There’s the end of town in sight already.”
We came to a slight bend in the road just before the outskirts, and I turned to my left, aware of someone watching us. My gaze met that of the village constable standing there.
I was used to the constable who walked past Mrs. Hennessey’s house each evening and paused to pass the time of day with her. And to the constable in Somerset whose children brought us fresh strawberries from his garden every spring. Comfortable figures who kept order and were a part of the fabric of our lives.
This man was cut from a different cloth, and I thought perhaps he’d been in the war, wounded and discharged,
