The little sitting room was even more crowded than before because they’d moved a bed into it. A bank of coal glowed in the grate. The windows were dosed. The smells of old age were stronger. The body was decaying in advance of death.
Mrs Gotobed’s tissue-paper skin covered the bones of her face like a sagging tent. ‘Wilfred, go and have your tea,’ she said.
‘I’m all right.’ Mr Gotobed smiled uneasily at me. ‘Mother likes to make sure I’m eating properly.’
‘That’s why you must have your tea. Mrs Appleyard will sit with me.’
‘Of course I will.’
Mr Gotobed left the room.
‘I don’t know what he’ll do when I’m gone,’ Mrs Gotobed said as soon as the door had dosed. ‘No more sense than a new-born baby.’
‘How are you?’
‘Tired. Very tired. Sit by the window where I can see you.’
I sat on a hard chair near the window overlooking the Close. Pursy stared incuriously at me from the window seat. A golden slab of sunshine poured through the opposite window. Dust swam in the air and lay thickly on the horizontal surfaces. I wished I could turn back time for Mrs Gotobed, and for myself, until we reached a golden age when pain had not existed. The lids fluttered over Mrs Gotobed’s eyes.
‘Still looking for Canon Youlgreave?’ she said.
I nodded. ‘In a way.’
‘He was a good ’man, a good man.’ The eyes were open now to their fullest extent. ‘Do you hear what I say? A good man.’
What I say three times is true. But why was it so important to her even now, when the life was almost visibly seeping out of her.
‘What about the Martlesham children’s aunt? What happened to her?’
The old woman’s shoulders twitched.
‘You must have known her.’ Urgency made me raise my voice. ‘What was she like? What did she feel about the children?’
Mrs Gotobed shook her head slowly from side to side. She blew out through loosely dosed lips, making a noise like a dying balloon.
‘I’m a fool, aren’t I?’ I said. ‘It was you all along. You were the aunt.’
She continued to blow out air. Then she stopped and smiled at me. ‘I wondered if you’d ever guess.’
‘You didn’t want the children. You had a good job, and then you were getting married. Would they have been in the way?’
‘I was his queen,’ Mrs Gotobed mumbled. ‘Last chance for me. But I knew Sammy didn’t want the children. Can’t say I blamed him. Her children, especially.’
‘Your sister’s?’
‘Everyone knew what she’d been like. Better off dead, that one. Bad blood.’
‘Canon Youlgreave helped.’
‘He was very kind. And there’s no denying the money came in handy.’
‘Simon went first?’
‘Couldn’t wait. He left just after his ma died, before me and Sammy got engaged. Nancy lived with me for a bit after that.’ She screwed up her face. ‘I told you, I had lodgings in Bridge Street. Landlady kept complaining about the children. Couldn’t abide the trouble and the mess they made, and the noise, and she wouldn’t look after them when I was at work. I’ll thank you to remember I’m not a nursemaid, that’s what she said. Silly woman, with a front tooth missing … I can see her now. Wilfred never made much noise. He always was a quiet boy, right from the start.’
‘Nancy,’ I reminded her, trying to keep her to the point. ‘What was Nancy like?’
There was a pause. Then Mrs Gotobed said slowly, as though the words were being pulled out like teeth, ‘Out for what she could get. Nice as pie with Mr Youlgreave, oh yes, but when she was at home with me it was another matter. Nasty piece of work when all’s said and done.’
‘When did she leave?’
‘Sammy and me were wed in the autumn. October the fourteenth. It was before that.’
‘And before Canon Youlgreave left Rosington?’
‘I think so. But it can’t have been long before. He said he’d give Sammy and me a wedding present, and he did – he sent us some money. But he’d gone by then.’
‘Where did he take Nancy?’
‘To a lady and a gentleman who were friends of his. No children of their own, he said. They were going to bring her up a lady. Always had the luck of the devil, that one. Trust her to fall on her feet.’ The eyelids drooped again. ‘Little bitch.’ The lids flickered. ‘Sorry. It slipped out. Really, I’m sorry.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘No one else knew, apart from Sammy. Not about the money. Not about the children. Sammy thought it was for the best. We said I’d had them adopted by relations in Birmingham. It was for their own good.’
‘You never heard from them again?’
‘I did from Simon. He sent me a letter from Canada. And I’m sure Mr Youlgreave wouldn’t have hurt the kiddies, he was a clergyman. Anyhow, why would he do them any harm?’
There were footsteps on the stairs. Suddenly her face became cunning.
‘You won’t tell Wilfred? You promise? A Bible promise?’
‘Of course I won’t tell him,’ I said. And the fact that she needed me to say that made it obvious that she must have at least suspected that Nancy was not going to live in a gentleman’s house and grow into a fine lady.
The door opened and Wilfred Gotobed edged into the room. ‘Are you all right, Mother?’
She was still looking at me. ‘When will this end? I’ve had enough.’
I stood up. ‘I hope I haven’t tired you.’
The old woman shook her head.
‘Does Mother the power of good to see a new face,’ Mr Gotobed said. ‘Doesn’t it, Mother? When you’re feeling better, we could get a wheelchair and –’
‘Goodbye, dear,’ Mrs Gotobed said to me, and turned her head away.
‘Goodbye.’
‘It was a long way from Swan Alley,’ she said as I reached the door. ‘You’ll remember that, won’t you?’
I nodded. Mr Gotobed stumbled towards me but I said I would see myself out.
A moment later I was breathing the sweet, fresh air of the Close. They said there was one law for the rich and one for the poor. Perhaps rich and poor had different moralities as well.
Now I knew or could guess what had happened in 1904. Perhaps Francis had buried what was left of the body in one of the gardens of the Close. Or put it in a weighted sack and dropped it in the river like a litter of unwanted kittens. No one had wanted to know what he had done, not to Nancy Martlesham, because she wasn’t the sort of little girl who belonged in the Close or anywhere else.
I felt no sense of achievement. It wasn’t just that I liked old Mrs Gotobed and I did not like what I’d heard of Nancy Martlesham. There was another problem. Something niggled. Something didn’t make sense. And I didn’t think I would ever see Mrs Gotobed again, and so I would never find out what it was.