‘What kind of love was it,’ Margaretta cried, ‘that could evaporate in a second? Just because I made a mistake?’
The letters were returned to the dressing-table drawer, the key turned in the lock, the key itself secreted beneath a frilled cloth. Laura, catching a reflection of herself in the dressing-table looking-glass, saw that she had turned as white as powder. She felt weak, and imagined that if she stood up she would faint.
‘I don’t know why I keep his old letters,’ Margaretta said. ‘I honestly don’t know.’
That it had been Margaretta and not she who had been foolish was no consolation for Laura. That it was she, not Margaretta, to whom he had written for longer, until the day before his death, was none either. His protestations of passion seemed like mockery now.
‘Except I suppose,’ said Margaretta, ‘that I went on loving him. I always will.’
And I, too, thought Laura. She would love him in spite of the ugly pain she felt, in spite of not understanding why he had behaved so. Had two girls’ longing simply been more fun than one’s? Had he been as cruel as that?
‘I have a headache,’ she said, ‘I think I’ll lie down for a little.’
The days that followed were as unbearable for Laura as the days that followed her foolishness had been for Margaretta. Dr Heaslip said twice that their guest was looking peaky; she did her best to smile, ‘It’s all right, really,’ Margaretta reassured her, assuming that Laura’s lowness was a kind of sympathy. ‘It’s over now. He’s dead and gone.’
He was buried in a country churchyard a mile or so from the de Courcys’ house: that much at least Laura had elicited from Margaretta. One early morning, as dawn was just beginning to glimmer, she let herself out of the tall wooden doors through which Matt Devlin every day drove Dr Heaslip’s car, arid cycled out into the countryside. Trees that were at first only shadows acquired foliage as dawn advanced, hedges and fields softened into colour, stone walls and gates offered again the detail that night had claimed. Around the churchyard, rooks were noisy, and on the grave of Ralph de Courcy there were fresh flowers that Laura knew were Margaretta’s, conveyed there secretly also. She picked honeysuckle and laid it on the earth above his head. She knelt and spoke his name; she repeated what so often she had written in her letters. She couldn’t help loving him in spite of still not understanding.
‘You went, didn’t you?’ Margaretta accused. ‘You went in the middle of the night?’
‘In the early morning.’
‘He loved me, y’know, before I was so stupid. It was me he wrote letters to.’
The summer crept by. They talked much less than they had talked before. Politeness began between them, and smiles that were not meant. They missed the past but did not say so, and then – on the night before Laura was to return to England – Margaretta said:
‘I’ve hated you this summer.’
‘There is no reason to hate me, Margaretta.’
‘It has to do with him. I don’t know what it is.’
‘Well, I don’t hate you, Margaretta, and I never could.’
‘That’s nice.’
‘Don’t be unhappy, Margaretta.’
Why could she not have shared the truth? Why could she not have said that in the game he’d played he’d wanted to know all about Anstey Rye also? She might have pointed out that when you scraped away the superficialities of her early-morning journey – the peaceful dawn, the rooks, the honeysuckle – it had been less honourable and less courageous than Margaretta’s. In her wise virgin way, she had taken no chances in visiting only the dead.
‘Margaretta…’
She hesitated, unable to go on. And Margaretta said:
‘I’ll never forgive you for going to his grave.’
‘I only went to say goodbye.’
‘It was me he wrote to.’
Again Laura tried to say that she, as much as Margaretta, had been shamed. Sharing their folly, would they have laughed in the end over Ralph de Courcy, she wondered, as they had laughed over so much else? Would they have talked for half the night in Margaretta’s bedroom, exorcizing that lingering pain?
‘Margaretta,’ Laura began, but still could not go on.
The De Luxe Picture House has gone. Mr Hearne is dead. So is Mrs Eldon, her lips trimmed down to size. But Coffey’s still smells pleasantly of paper, and Murphy’s of vanilla and grapes. Wiry Bohan and Katie are grandparents now.
‘But oh, it’s not much changed, y’know,’
Dr Heaslip and his wife might or might not be dead also: this is not mentioned in Margaretta’s news. Her voice is spiritless, and Laura has to think as each name is mentioned. Margaretta’s features mourn the loss: a conversation, through desuetude, has lost its savour. It was harsh, so casually and so swiftly to have considered her bland and fat, implying insensitivity. Laura should reach out and kiss her, but the gesture would be false.
Margaretta remembers the flowers that year after year she has placed on the grave, and the bitterness she felt when she thought of Laura. She cycled in that same secret way to the churchyard, not caring if the de Courcys guessed that it was she who had picked the weeds from the mound that marked his presence. When she ceased to make the journey she had at first felt faithless, but the feeling had worn away with time.
For Laura there is the memory of the guilt that had remained for so long, the letters she had tried to compose, her disappointment in herself.
