Angel with Two Faces

lines for the wrong play.

As brief as his visits were, though, he was sure he would have noticed how shabby and neglected the cottage had become if it had been that way when he was last here. The flowerbeds which Mary and Sam Pinching had taken such a pride in, and which Morwenna always tended meticulously as a tribute to her parents, were now overgrown and full of weeds; terracotta pots remained empty and covered in the dark-green moss of a damp winter, and the trailing honeysuckle which covered the south-facing gable end seemed to have given up hope of anyone noticing that its trellis had come loose from the wall and was crushing the branches into the ground with its weight. The house – which his uncle and some of the men from the estate had restored after the fire – had fared no better. Stubborn orange rust marks circled the hinges of doors and windows, weeds grew out of the thatch, and the paintwork looked tired and dirty. Loe Cottage seemed to Archie to share the family’s grief, although he couldn’t help feeling that to get to this state the deterioration must have begun some time before Harry’s death. He had always admired the strength with which the twins had kept the family together after their parents’ death, but lately they must have let things go. Why, he wondered? Some lines from Tennyson came into his head – one of those merciless evocations of sadness and isolation that the poet was so good at. This was hardly a moated grange but the dreariness was the same, and Morwenna certainly looked every bit as weary as the Mariana of the poem’s title – weary, and tired of life.

Archie had no idea what she needed to talk to him about so confidentially, but it would take more than kind words and sympathy to alleviate the depth of misery he sensed in her. He finished his tea and decided to go inside: on such a hot day, he and Morwenna might stand more chance of finding some peace and quiet there. In the front parlour, where all the food for the wake had been laid out on borrowed trestle tables, he found yet another crowd of people but Morwenna was not among them. He tried to push his way further into the room, but his path was blocked by two of his fellow bearers. The elder man, Joseph Caplin, was obviously drunk – although as far as Archie could remember, he had not been truly sober since the break-up of his family – and it was the younger of the two who spoke first.

‘Well, if it isn’t the famous Inspector,’ he said sarcastically. ‘We are honoured, although I’d have put money on the fact that you’d come sniffing round Morwenna again the minute she was on her own.’ Archie ignored the bait. Simon Jacks – or ‘Kestrel’ as the gamekeeper was usually known – had always hated him and his friendship with Morwenna was top of a long list of reasons. Jacks had always wanted her and, just after the fire, when he thought Morwenna was vulnerable, he had pursued her so relentlessly that she had begged Harry to make him back off. Usually, Jacks took his resentment out on the woman he eventually married, but today he seemed happy to share it with Archie. ‘She’s got friends here, you know, and she certainly doesn’t need you, so do us all a favour and fuck off back to London.’

Jacks’s wife – a tired-looking woman with thin, mousy hair and no light in her eyes – opened her mouth to say something but Jacks silenced her with a look. For her sake, Archie tried not to let his diminishing patience get the better of him. He turned his back on the insult, and noticed with relief that Lettice and her father were over by the food, talking to Mrs Snipe. Before he could join them, though, a child’s voice cut through the room with a lightness more appropriate to a birthday party than a wake.

‘Don’t forget to leave some food for Harry.’

Everyone turned to look at Loveday with the same mixture of embarrassment and horror that had greeted her laughter in church. In the stillness that followed, Archie could hear the ticking of the clock from the hall and the insistent tapping of a fly against the window. In the end, it was Mrs Snipe who broke the silence. ‘Don’t you worry, my love, there’s plenty to go round,’ she said breezily, as if the girl had said nothing out of place. ‘Why don’t you come through to the pantry with me and I’ll show you what we’ve got in there.’

She led the girl away and the sound of voices built gradually again. Lettice grimaced at Archie from the other side of the table. ‘I know actresses who’d kill for an exit line like that,’ she called, picking up a bread roll smothered with jam and cream. ‘Isn’t it nice to be back?’

He laughed, glad to share a moment of normality, but the respite was short-lived. Joseph Caplin had climbed unsteadily on to a chair and was striking an empty whisky bottle with a knife to get the room’s attention. What was it about the British that made them insist on this excruciating moment at any wedding or funeral, Archie wondered, trying to remember if he had ever been to one which did not reduce somebody’s past or future to a drunken display of emotion.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Caplin slurred, not quite sober enough to focus on anyone in particular. ‘I’d like you to raise your glasses – to the death of Harry Pinching.’

‘To Harry Pinching.’ A number of voices spoke up loudly around the room, as if volume could compensate for Caplin’s drunken slip of the tongue. The farmer got down from his chair, smiling to himself and apparently oblivious of what he had said. Wondering how much of a mistake it had actually been, Archie left them to their drink and went through to the kitchen, glad that Harry’s sisters had at least been spared the awkwardness of the moment. He opened the back door just in time to catch the end of an angry exchange between Morwenna and the young curate. Surprised, and aware that he had walked in on a private conversation, he hesitated. Morwenna had her back to him but Nathaniel saw him instantly and disappeared quickly round the side of the cottage, though not before Archie had noticed how pale he was.

Morwenna turned to face him and, as she showed no sign of embarrassment, Archie decided against pretending not to have heard. ‘What’s Nathaniel done to make you so angry with him?’ he asked gently. ‘Is it because he and Harry had fallen out?’

‘God, how quickly word gets round – even as far as London,’ Morwenna said sharply, then seemed to regret her sarcasm. ‘I’m sorry – you didn’t deserve that, but it’s been a long day and I’m sick to death of sympathy, particularly the sort that comes tied to a dog collar.’ She paused for a moment and pushed her hair back from her eyes. ‘No, it’s nothing to do with that – boys will be boys, won’t they? It’s just that Nathaniel and I have different ideas of comfort, and I don’t want him to keep passing his on to Loveday. I’ve spent the last few weeks preparing her for the idea that she’s never going to see her brother again, and he wrecks it all by filling her head full of nonsense about the resurrection and eternal life. It’s a lot to ask of a normal fourteen-year-old to understand the difference between a pretty fable that makes adults feel better and a literal promise that someone’s immortal, but Loveday’s not a normal fourteen-year-old. You know how it is – she lives in a world of her own, and half the time I’ve no idea what goes on in her head. She idolised Harry, and it won’t take much to make her believe he was invincible. That’s just not fair – on either of us. It’s me that has to deliver the cold, hard truth and pick up the pieces afterwards, and I’ve got my own grief to deal with.’

Archie understood the resentment that certainties about life and death could create in someone whose whole sense of purpose had just been destroyed – he had felt it often enough himself – but there had been more to the exchange between Morwenna and Nathaniel, even in the brief snatch that he had heard. ‘Sin is a big word to use, though – is that what you wanted to talk to me about?’ he asked and, when she nodded, added: ‘Let’s go somewhere a bit more private.’

They walked away from the house, down to the edge of the garden where a narrow lane separated them from trees that marked the northern boundary of the Loe estate, still in sight of the cottage but far enough away to be able to talk freely. The soft afternoon light filtered through new leaves on to a sweep of bluebells which seemed to drift like smoke through the woods, and Archie wondered if Morwenna, like him, was thinking of the last time they had sat together in this very spot. It was more than eight years ago now, not long after her parents had died, but the time of year was the same and then, too, she had been racked with grief and in despair about her future. They were already good friends – some people guessed there was more between them, but he was still fighting his feelings for Josephine and Morwenna, who was never short of suitors, treated him more like an older brother – and she had asked him to go with her to salvage what was left of her life from the burnt-out shell of the cottage. Afterwards, he had sat outside with her, holding her as she cried and waiting until she felt ready to leave. He remembered looking down through the bluebell woods: the view had been much as it was today, except for two dead magpies which the gamekeeper of the time had strung up by the neck on the fence – a deterrent to other vermin and, it seemed, a potent denial of the rhyme which he had learnt by heart as a boy. The birds moved gently in the breeze, and the green and violet sheen of their feathers mirrored the flowers that covered the ground, but the lifelessness in their eyes mocked any promise of summer. The image had stayed with him, allied to Morwenna – a pairing of beauty and death which made each the more powerfully felt, and which now seemed more poignant than ever.

‘Just like old times,’ Morwenna said, as if reading his thoughts, but her attempt at lightness was not very