Afterwards Matty could never be sure how she came to be lying on the river bank. She was wringing wet, hair trailing over her face and her mouth tasting of rot, gravel and sour vomit. Mud spread into her eyes and ears.
She remembered only the hot scent of lilies, Daisy’s sudden cry as she saw Matty, Kit’s bent, absorbed head and running. Running away. Running on high heels up the river path towards the splintering jetty. She remembered the crunch of stone, a splash and the piercing cry of a disturbed bird. There was a smell of wet vegetation, the slap of water on her skin and mud sprouting silkily through her fingers. Then, she had spun round and round, the black Dove gown billowing, and plunged into the matching blackness.
Above all, Matty remembered the stones pressing into her face as someone thumped hard on her back. Danny shouting, ‘Get ‘elp. There’s been an accident’ – and of how it did not surprise her to be hovering between death and a ridiculous desire to ask if her guests had been offered more coffee.
Matty had known all along that she did not deserve happiness.
‘My goodness, you gave us a fright.’ Robbie plumped up the pillows and wedged Matty upright. ‘Open your mouth now, please.’ She inserted a spoon between Matty’s lips and then pushed Matty’s jaw shut. ‘Swallow, please.’
If ever I have sinned, thought Matty, wearily picking her way back to consciousness out of drugged sleep, this surely must be my punishment. Robbie and a medicine spoon. ‘Time?’ she whispered through a throat so sore it was raw.
‘Four o’clock in the afternoon. You’ve been asleep for some time. Very natural, considering.’ Robbie did not refer to the hideous business of resuscitation, the bowls and tubes, the sounds, the touch-and-go of the first half-hour.
‘What happened?’
Robbie pulled down her sleeves, fastened the cuffs and sat down heavily on the bed with the determination of a professional interrogator charged with a mission to gather information. ‘You tell me, Mrs Kit.’ She leant over and Matty’s vision was filled by the moon face and hedge of hair. ‘Did you trip in the dark? Those high heels? You can tell me, Mrs Kit.’
Matty closed her eyes and ran her tongue over her sore lips. ‘I don’t know.’ Fragmented memories sifted like blown dust through her mind.
‘Mr Kit can’t make out why you were up by that part of the river in the first place.’
‘Who found me?’
Robbie pursed her lips. ‘That Danny person,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why he was in the grounds. He said he heard a noise and came to check up. He found you floating in the water by the boathouse.’
Deceptive and incomplete, the first recovered memory drove a needle into Matty’s chest. I can cope with that, she thought. Then, as the rest assembled – the hot night, the girl... Kit and Daisy twined together – the needle turned into a sword which smashed through bone and nerve. Matty closed her eyes: somehow she had to endure it. Finger on Matty’s pulse, Robbie checked off the pulse beats against the watch pinned onto her chest in the way she had observed Miss Binns doing it.
‘There, there,’ she said, her tone a mixture of curiosity and excitement at the drama. Matty’s eyes remained closed and she continued, ‘Fancy. I’m going to have my hands full with two invalids. I haven’t been so busy since Mr Kit and the girls were young. I don’t know how I’m going to manage.’ She meant exactly the opposite.
Because she knew it was important to put the record straight, Matty summoned the remnants of her energy. ‘I must have fallen in,’ she croaked – and allowed herself to believe it. She opened her eyes and willed Robbie to look directly at her. ‘Wasn’t that silly of me?’ Robbie was silent. ‘Wasn’t it, Miss Robson?’
The older woman gave in. ‘Yes,’ she said, reluctant to bypass drama but aware of her duty, which was to preserve the Dysart reputation. ‘You must have done. That landing stage is a disgrace. I’ve warned Sir Rupert about it for years.’
Half an hour later when Robbie went downstairs for her tea, Flora came and sat by Matty’s bed.
‘Poor darling,’ she said, in her best conversational manner to conceal her shock and concern. ‘Father sends his regards and says hurry up and get better as no one reads to him like you. He says you and he are two of a bloody kind. Careless.’ Flora took Matty’s hand. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘My throat is hellish.’
‘Aha.’ Flora nodded. ‘That must have been the tube Dr Lofts put down.’ Conscious that her interest made for a certain ghoulishness, she supplied the medical detail. ‘Robin had to make sure you hadn’t swallowed anything terrible in the river.’ She rubbed Matty’s hand hard. ‘Awful for you. You might have died.’
‘Dr Lofts?’ Matty’s croak was awful. ‘How did... I thought...’
‘Well.’ For the life of her, Flora could not prevent her eyes brightening. At the same time she managed to look both shamefaced and defiant. ‘It was an emergency and he is the nearest doctor. Besides, I thought you liked him. Don’t you?’
‘Yes.’ Flora was forced to bend over to hear Matty properly. ‘I do.’
A flush stormed into Flora’s cheeks and she ducked her head. ‘I mean, he’s so good with people, don’t you think? Not that it’s any of my business. So gentle, though.’ Too preoccupied with the reappearance of Robin to ask questions, Flora would have continued in the same vein but Matty interrupted.
‘Flora. Listen. Please.’
Flora edged the chair closer to the bed. ‘What is it, old thing? I don’t think you should be talking too much.’
Matty took a deep shuddering breath. ‘Daisy?’ she asked. ‘Aunt Susan and Uncle Ambrose? Have they gone?’
Flora’s hair was a halo in the evening sun; beneath it her blue eyes were perplexed and affectionate. ‘They went this morning,’ she said. ‘Daisy felt they should get out of the way. Besides, she wasn’t feeling very well. It was the best thing and, frankly, they were a nuisance. Did you...?’ Flora hesitated to ask Matty because it did not seem likely, but perhaps a brush with death made people feel different. ‘I don’t suppose you wanted to see her.’
‘No.’
‘That’s all right, then. I didn’t think you would. And Daisy did look very odd. Perhaps she’s sickening for something.’
‘And the other guests?’
‘They left as soon as possible. I think they were all very shocked. I must say, Matty, it was quite dramatic. Picture the scene. Kit was holding you in his arms. You were dripping all over the terrace looking like Ophelia and Kit was as white as a sheet. Your aunt Susan screamed, Daisy chose that moment to faint, and Danny was staggering around, because he’d been at the whisky, leaving wet footprints all over the carpet. Naturally...’ Flora could not resist an opportunity to bring his name into the conversation, ‘we telephoned Robin, I mean Dr Lofts. There was nothing else for it.’
‘Kit?’
‘He’s been in and out while you were sleeping. I think he’s all right. I can never tell with Kit. Would you like to see him?’
‘What do you think people are saying, Flora?’
Flora struggled between honesty and the lessons she had learnt from Robin on patient care. ‘Nothing too terrible. After all, it was an accident.’
‘Yes. It was.’
‘Did you wish to see Kit?’
Matty turned her head towards the window and did not answer. Troubled by the undercurrents, Flora watched her for a minute and then tiptoed away.
During the night, Matty’s temperature rose sharply and Robin was again called in. He diagnosed acute shock, possibly pneumonia, perhaps a recurrence of rheumatic fever, but it was too early to tell. The following day she was no better, and Robin began to talk about hospital.
In the early hours of the second night, Robbie was roused from her chair by Matty’s groans and mutters. She sponged her down, gave her lemonade to drink and, with an effort, Matty raised her head from the pillow where, in her fevered fancy, nightmares clustered on the lace edging waiting to leap.
‘There,’ said Robbie almost tenderly, and her plait of pepper-and-salt hair swung over her shoulder. ‘There’s a good girl.’
And because she was ill and lonely and hurt beyond words, Matty forgot she did not like or trust Robbie, and clung to her hand for comfort.
‘Robbie...’ she whispered. Robbie’s expression took on a tinge of triumph, for Matty had always called her Miss Robson. ‘Robbie. I can’t get to sleep unless I know.’
Robbie spooned more lemonade between Matty’s lips. ‘What do you want to know?’
Matty’s bird hands plucked at the sleeve of Robbie’s uniform. ‘Why does no one go into Lady Dysart’s garden?’
A drop fell onto the sheet and Robbie made a fuss of fetching a towel. She scrubbed at the patch. ‘Don’t you know, Mrs Kit?’ and Matty could tell she was enjoying her advantage. ‘Surely you do? Hasn’t he told you?’
‘No. He hasn’t.’
Robbie paused for fuller effect. ‘Lady Dysart died there.’
‘Mother.’ Daisy knelt by the chintz armchair in the drawing room of Number 5, Upper Brook Street. ‘Mother.’
Susan put down her fountain pen, looked up from the account book and, alerted by Daisy’s tone, which did not suggest good news, stiffened. ‘What is it, Daisy?’ she answered, anxious to avoid unpleasantness.
As she talked, Daisy clung to the back of the chair for support. ‘Mother, I’m going to have a baby. It will be born in the spring. May, I think.’
My God, thought Susan, her eyes snapping shut with shock, this is the result of all my efforts. She sank back onto the cushions. ‘You little fool,’ she said softly. ‘You little thankless fool. I thought I could have trusted you.’ She opened her eyes. ‘If you couldn’t control yourself, why at least weren’t you careful?’
‘You’ve got to help me.’
Her mother’s eyes refocused. ‘Of course I have to help you, Daisy. What else would I do?’
‘I didn’t know,’ said Daisy truthfully, and let out a sigh of relief. She pressed her hand to her stomach which, these days, was permanently at war with itself, levered herself into the chair, decided that made her feel worse and stood up again. ‘I had no idea what feeling sick all the time was like,’ she said, one hand on the mantelpiece. ‘It’s impossible to think of anything but your body.’
‘I thought there was something odd about you.’ Susan reached for her address book and began to leaf through it.
Daisy picked up the box of Bryant and May matches lying beside the reproduction statuette of Canova’s Three Graces, and rolled it between her fingers. Round and round. ‘Aren’t you going to ask the obvious question?’
‘Be quiet, Daisy. I want to think.’ Susan did not look up.
‘Don’t you want to know who the father is?’ Daisy had a hysterical thought that she was participating in some madly modern play where no one connected with anyone else.
‘It’s irrelevant who the father is,’ said Susan. ‘You won’t be having it. But I imagine Kit Dysart isn’t a million miles away from the problem. And I suppose all that nonsense with Matilda in the river was something to do with it. It would have been too much to hope that Tim was the culprit who at least could have married you. Now, I’m not sure that Brayfield still practises.’
‘Practises?’
‘For goodness sake, don’t repeat things.’ Susan marked the ‘B’ section in the address book with her finger. ‘Harley Street, Daisy. Don’t be stupid. You must know what I mean.’
Feeling better now that the confession was over, Daisy stood upright. ‘I’m not stupid, Mother, and I have no intention of paying a visit to your man in Harley Street.’
It took a minute or two for the implications to sink into Susan. ‘Great God,’ she said, staring social ruin in the face. ‘Have you gone mad?’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ said Daisy. ‘But I am frightened. About coping. About having it.’
‘I have never heard such nonsense. You can’t possibly keep a baby. You’ll be branded a trollop, admittedly by women who are no better themselves, but at least they’re discreet about this sort of thing.’ Susan seldom appeared agitated – in fact Daisy could not think of one instance when her mother’s shiny carapace had been breached – but Daisy’s news had succeeded in making her manicured hand shake as she reached for a cigarette. ‘You have no right to think of exposing us like that.’
‘I can’t kill it,’ said Daisy flatly.
‘My dear Daisy, you won’t be the first or the last.’
Daisy walked up and down the cluttered drawing room. ‘How much did you love Father when you married him?’
‘Very much.’ Susan was an expert liar but, in this instance, she did not sound convincing, so she repeated it. ‘Very much.’
‘Describe what you felt.’
Susan threw her daughter a look which said, I’d better humour you. ‘Well. Your father was very suitable. He promised to look after me. He was pleasant and good-tempered and I wanted to be married. Your father has been all of these things, of course, and considerate.’
Daisy thought of her stiff-collared father, his perpetual frown and the half-hearted conversation made over breakfast in a concession to fatherhood. Yes, Ambrose had been a father who did his best, and she was not ungrateful.
Daisy stopped prowling, and held her stomach. ‘Did you feel as awful as I do when you were having Marcus and me?’
‘Yes.’ Susan was not one for sharing intimacies and she did not elaborate.
‘The sickness comes in waves. Like being on a boat.’
Like being on a boat.
‘Will you be quiet, Daisy.’
Daisy moved away from the cigarette smoke and stood under the open window. ‘Matty doesn’t know about the baby, Mother.’
‘Daisy...’ All Susan’s cleverly acquired, cold-heartedly applied social arts went into her plea. ‘This is serious. You have got to be sensible. Listen to me. I am your mother and I know the world. It will kill your father, give him a heart attack or something, and the scandal will affect business. You can’t keep this baby.’ Susan perceived she was not making progress. ‘You can’t be so thoughtless.’
‘Do you know what happens when I see Kit?’ Daisy asked the window pane. ‘When I see him across the room, at Ascot, at a ball, wherever, the breath leaves my body, Mother. That’s how it is with me.’
‘Oh, Daisy.’ The armour-plated Susan almost sobbed. ‘This is suicide. This is selfishness—’ She seized on a straw. ‘Does he know about it?’
‘No.’
‘Then tell him, for God’s sake. He’ll tell you what’s what.’
‘No.’ Daisy was in the grip of a combination of exaltation and nausea, which had worked on her until she was light-headed and dizzy from the notion of sacrifice and the world well lost for love. ‘Falling in love freed me, I think.’ Daisy faced her mother, still rolling the matchbox over and over in her hand. ‘It freed me from myself, and all the torment and anguish I have felt since cannot take that away. I will not do anything to harm his baby.’ She touched her stomach. ‘And I’ve decided not to tell him either.’
‘Think of Marcus. It will ruin his standing in the regiment.’
Daisy raised her head and Susan was reminded of a saint imprinted onto stained glass at the moment of religious ecstasy – impassioned, tunnel-visioned and immovably obstinate.
‘Get rid of it,’ she repeated. ‘Marry Tim and have another one quickly.’
Daisy shook her head and there was pity for her mother in her face. Slowly, the address book slipped from Susan’s grasp onto the carpet.
‘Perhaps I will marry Tim in the end,’ Daisy said thoughtfully.
‘But I am not going to kill Kit’s baby. That’s where you’re going to have to help me.’
‘You are a fool, then,’ said Susan bitterly. ‘A weak, selfish fool.’
Churned up, frightened by her own daring, Daisy said, ‘Don’t you see? It isn’t weakness at all. In choosing this way, by giving myself a choice, I have become strong.’
‘No,’ said Susan. ‘I don’t see.’
Guilt has several effects and one leads into another. Each long day while Matty lay burning with pneumonia ratified this uneven mental state for Kit. His first response was an evasion, a shabby hope: perhaps Matty had not seen Daisy and him in the garden and it was an accident. His second was anger. How dare Matty make such a public act — such a destructive act? His third was a despairing acknowledgement that certain events recycled, repeated, resurfaced, and were inescapable.
His fourth was to put as great a distance as possible between him, Matty and the house. Of course, he could do no such thing and Kit’s dreams were jumbled with images of smooth-branched gum arabic trees, of sand and raging thirst.
Instead guilt drove him into the sick room to watch over his restless wife and to share the night vigils with Robbie. Left on his own for those troubled hours, he nursed a tumbler of whisky and read. More often than not, he found himself staring at nothing. Details of the bedroom – rose chintz curtains, satin eiderdown, lace-edged sheets – etched onto his memory for ever.
Thus Kit experienced the catharsis of watching over a sickbed where every priority except one is leached away. In the shadow of the nightlight, he picked over the past and saw how blind he had been, saw how passion had made him selfish. But why, he asked himself, endlessly, had he not married Daisy?
Would he do the same again? Kit stared into his glass and tried to piece together strands of truth in the muddle, understand the motivations that drove him. Of course, whisky did not give good answers. It never does.
‘Robbie?’ Matty usually woke up for a drink and she was stirring now.
Kit put down his glass and got to his feet. Matty never asked for him when she woke. Why should she? But sometimes he hoped that she would – because it would make him feel better. ‘It’s Kit, Matty. Hang on. I’m coming.’
Kit poured barley water into a glass and moistened her lips with his fingertip. ‘Be a good girl and drink this.’ He eased a teaspoon of liquid between the drained lips. ‘Just a little.’ Matty swallowed. ‘And again.’
He eased her head gently back onto the pillow and pulled back the sheets. Matty’s nightdress had rucked up round her thighs and, very gently, he pulled it straight.
‘You shouldn’t be doing this,’ she croaked. ‘But thank you.’
‘Why not?’ Kit brushed damp hair back from her cheek. ‘Do you want some more to drink?’
Matty shook her head and closed her eyes. Kit replaced the netting top on the jug and went through to the bathroom to wash the glass. She had felt so tiny in his hands. So light and brittle — and he thought how much he had done to break her. He returned, checked Matty was still, sat down in the chair, adjusted the light and tried to reread the final passage from The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. It failed him.
‘I’m sorry, Daisy,’ he had said when the Chudleighs departed in haste the morning after the furore. ‘I’m sorry for the mess and the waste.’
They were in the hall at Hinton Dysart, and she looked up from her dressing case with that quick slanting look that held him enchanted. Her cheeks were dead white. ‘This is the end, isn’t it, Kit? We must not see each other again.’
‘No. I mean, yes.’
He must have looked as desperate as he felt, for she touched his hand and said, ‘You must not worry about it.’
He permitted himself to gaze at the beautiful face, a little mysterious under one of her hats, he couldn’t remember which one. She returned his scrutiny then turned away.
‘Goodbye, Kit,’ she said in a matter-of-fact way...
‘Why aren’t you in bed, Kit? Can’t someone else take over?’ Matty whispered from the bed.
Kit slid The Seven Pillars of Wisdom onto the table and got up. ‘I thought you were asleep.’
‘I can’t see you very well.’ Matty was fretful. ‘Can I have the light on?’
He switched on the bedside lamp. Matty sighed and seemed easier. ‘It’s less frightening,’ she said. ‘I don’t like the dark.’
‘Are you feeling better?’
She moved jerkily under the bedclothes and winced because moving hurt, especially her chest. ‘Not much.’ She experimented with a smile, which proved too much effort. ‘Everything hurts. My hands hurt.’
He took one of her hands and examined it. ‘Wait a minute,’ he said and disappeared through the connecting door to his room. He returned with a pot of ointment.
‘I should have given this to you before but I didn’t think about it. Do you remember I told you about Prince Abdullah? Well, this was supplied by his personal physician.’ Kit unscrewed the lid and gently rubbed the paste into Matty’s skin. ‘That should help.’
The irony of the gesture did not escape Kit and it made him feel worse: everything he gave Matty was second-hand.
But it pleased Matty, and she held up her other hand. When he had finished, Kit pulled up the chair and suggested that he read to her. But Matty wanted to get something straight.
‘Are you going to leave me for Daisy?’
Dr Lofts had issued stringent warnings about tiring or exciting the patient and Kit leant over Matty. ‘No, I’m not going to leave you.’
‘I need to know so I can fix my mind on what I’m to get well for.’
‘Matty, don’t.’
‘The truth?’ Her fever-ridden eyes stared up at him. Robin’s orders forgotten, Kit slipped to his knees beside the bed.
‘Matty, I am so sorry, so very sorry.’ He cupped his hand around her face and his thumb rubbed gently against her cheek.
The blood pounded through Matty’s frame, releasing rivulets of poison into her flesh. Sweat gathered in her armpits and between her legs, vanishing before it had a chance to cool her heated skin. Her lungs laboured. The bedroom wavered between eyelids that had grown too heavy, and Kit’s face, with its blond lick of hair, hung disembodied above her. Despite the fever, though, the lump of grief and outrage in Matty’s chest refused to dissolve.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ Kit was saying. ‘I’m sorry I hurt you.’
Matty closed her eyes. ‘I don’t want to talk any more.’
After a while her breathing deepened. Inexpertly, Kit pulled the sheet up over her arms, and got to his feet. Stiff and chilled, he went over to the window and lifted the curtain. Dawn was breaking and the garden wore the dewy, soft look of autumn. Kit caught his lower lip between his teeth: he wanted to punch his fist through the glass because he had hurt someone so badly, because he had blundered.
Curiously, of all the emotions Kit experienced when his mother died, the strongest had been the sense that his body did not belong to his mind, that both operated at a distance from one another. He felt that now. Kit raised his hand, looked at it, balled it into a fist and pushed it towards the glass where it came to rest. His feeling of loss was so great that he felt he would never recover.
A child was crying in Matty’s ear, a heartbroken sound, and Matty could not understand why. Determined to find out, she walked down the path towards the garden, her garden – only to find it had vanished. The garden was not there, and where there had been beauty and peace there was nothing.
The sobbing went on and on.
‘Hush now,’ said Robbie. ‘You’re crying in your sleep again, Mrs Kit. It won’t do. It upsets me, and Mr Kit here.’
Matty woke with a start and lay blinking at the ceiling. It was late afternoon and tea-time. Each time she woke, she was forced through the process of remembering. She had been ill, very ill, for six weeks, but was now better. To be more precise, without knowing how or why, Matty had willed herself to recover. Yesterday she had been allowed out of bed to sit by the fire.
‘Tea,’ said Robbie firmly, ‘and here’s Mr Kit to read to you.’
Behind Robbie’s back, Kit raised an eyebrow at his wife. ‘You’d better be a good girl and eat up all your bread and butter.’
Matty smiled. ‘Do I get sent into the corner if I don’t?’
She pulled herself upright and allowed Robbie to help her on with her dressing gown. Robbie tucked the folds modestly around Matty’s legs and pulled back the sheets. Matty held out her arms and Kit lifted her up from the bed and placed her in the chair by the fire. Robbie tucked an army’s supply of rugs around Matty and went over to attend to the bed which apparently required an inordinate amount of pillow banging.
Kit held up a copy of Time and Tide magazine, which was currently serializing Diary of a Provincial Lady. ‘More?’
‘Yes, please,’ said Matty.
Kit read: ‘“Call from Lady Boxe who says she is off to the South of France next week as she Must Have Sunshine. She asks me Why I do not go there too...”‘
Kit was a good reader and Matty gave a sigh of pleasure.
‘“Why not just pop into a train, enquires Lady B., pop across to France and pop out into the Blue Sky, Blue Sea and Summer Sun. Could make perfectly comprehensive reply to this but do not do so, question of expense having evidently not crossed Lady B.’s horizon...”‘
Not France, thought Kit. Not a good subject.
‘“... Reply to Lady B. with insincere professions of liking England very much in Winter, and she begs me not to let myself become parochially minded...”‘
Kit read on to the end of the extract, both of them enjoying the satire. No one regarding the scene by the bedroom fire would imagine that it hid a fault line. Not even Robin Lofts who looked in to be greeted by the sight of Kit’s legs splayed out in front of the fire. Matty was sipping tea from the best tea service which Mrs Dawes insisted on using – ‘As if that’s going to make her feel better,’ said Robbie.
‘Ah, Lofts.’ Kit got up and brushed crumbs from his lap. ‘I think my wife is better, judging by the giggles.’ He held up the magazine. ‘It’s excellent stuff. I’ll come back when you’ve finished with her.’
‘Dearest darling Kit,’ he read, in the privacy of the Exchequer, for the twentieth time. The letter had arrived two days ago, addressed in Marcus’s handwriting.
I cannot go without dotting ‘i’s’ and crossing ‘t’s’. I mean, I cannot say goodbye without giving some shape to what has happened between us. If you like, I want to put it in a frame so I can look at it properly – and then I will have done with it.
Now, Kit darling. Both of us understands that one phase is over. We took risks that should not have been taken. I am sorry, truly sorry it resulted in such disaster, and I am sorry Matty had to know. But, and it is a big, big but, my love doesn’t stop there. It keeps on growing like Matty’s garden. It grows through me. I breathe with it. I sleep with it. It gives me happiness I never thought possible, and pain that is too intense to describe.
I would not have it one drop the less. I am not a martyr and I wish desperately it had not turned out as it has. Despite the anguish I feel I would not go back, even though I can never have you, that I know I have hurt people, even Matty. For falling in love with you, Kit, has rescued me from being a silly and blank person. I believe that. Truly.
When I was with you, Kit, and learnt to love you, I was never sure where I ended and you began. That is no small thing in a life and now I have time to reflect, I know just how precious it is.
Listen, Kit. I am going away to France because I want to make a fresh start. I don’t know how long I will be there and I am not going to tell you where. You know how I love France. I will be perfectly safe and content.
For always,
Daisy
Kit folded the letter and put it back into the file labelled ‘Fencing’. Then he lit a cigarette and smoked it.
Upstairs, Robin turned his back while Matty adjusted her dressing gown. ‘Progress,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Did you eat lunch?’
‘Huge helpings.’
‘You’ve done well, Mrs Dysart. I’m proud of you.’
She gave him an unusually direct look. ‘If I can get through this crisis, I can get through most things.’
‘Yes, I think so.’ Robin did not insult her by pretending he had not heard the gossip. ‘Can you remember more yet?’ he asked carefully.
‘No.’
‘It’s no matter. These things take time.’
‘The funny thing is...’ Matty hesitated. ‘You might think this fanciful, but I think this illness has cleansed me in a strange way.’
Robin did not understand what she meant, but he stored the remark away in his memory. Outside in the corridor he met Kit.
‘Your wife is recovering,’ he reported. ‘I don’t think we will ever know what happened the night of the accident, and perhaps it is best that we shouldn’t. There is no point in remembering, if it brings distress. People do that, you know.’
‘Do they?’ said Kit.
‘Yes, they blank out what they don’t want to think about. However, Mrs Dysart seems very calm.’
The two men sized each other up. There was a query in Robin’s eyes and, Kit fancied, a hint of disapproval, but he was not prepared to answer any questions.
‘I see,’ he said shortly.
‘Under the circumstances, you won’t be requiring my services any more,’ Robin said. ‘I’m sure Mrs Dysart will be able to use Sir Rupert’s doctor.’
‘I’ll talk to her. I think it should be her choice.’
‘Of course.’
They parted, not exactly in accord, although they had come to be almost friends during the last weeks.
Matty was sewing when Kit rejoined her. Her hair was freshly brushed and anchored into combs, and she had put on her rose scent. Tea was cleared away and the fire freshly banked, and she was enjoying the solitude. With true English contrariness, the weather had turned raw and cold and it was difficult to imagine that only six weeks ago the house had sweltered.
She held up the canvas onto which she was tracing in petit point a fantasy of fruit and flowers. ‘See, I’ve put a ladybird on the hollyhock.’
Kit smiled at the poetic conceit. ‘You should embroider the garden here when you’ve finished.’
She put down the canvas. ‘Kit,’ she said in the light conversational tone she had recently adopted with him, ‘I know now why you didn’t want me to have anything to do with that part of the garden, so perhaps you would like to tell me the story.’ She folded the canvas. ‘In the end I found out, like I found out about you and Daisy.’
Kit sat down opposite and fingered the fringe of a Paisley shawl that lay over the back. Matty persisted. ‘You owe it to me, Kit. In fact, I insist.’
He was taken aback by this new Matty. ‘Yes, I do owe it to you,’ he replied. ‘But it is a long story and a difficult one.’
Kit hesitated but Matty was ready for that. She handed him the tortoiseshell cigarette box and the lighter. ‘Go on.’
‘My father married my mother in 1900. She was an American, and rich, and my father met her when she was over here doing the Season. Lady F. had been taken on to present her at Court. For a fee, of course. Lady F. made a living presenting girls who were just wide of the mark, or from the colonies or America. It’s often done. Her father had made a lot of money importing cotton from the South and making it up into cloth. My grandparents were generous with their children. Uncle Edwin went to Harvard, and they thought that if my mother did the Season in England it would add to her social standing. That’s how she met my father. At Ascot. They were forced to share an umbrella in a rainstorm.’
Kit pushed the chair back and got up. ‘As you know, Matty, things are not always simple. Perhaps in those days expectations were different. People wanted things differently. I don’t know.’ He turned to Matty, an eyebrow raised as if she might know. She didn’t. ‘My mother and my uncle were very fond of each other. Extremely fond, and they didn’t like being separated. Mother constantly referred to Uncle Edwin and they met frequently. He was often over here and they wrote to each other most weeks. I think it irritated my father. They understood each other so well, you see, that I think he felt left out.’
Matty remained quite still.
‘Their marriage wasn’t happy.’
Yes, she thought. She loved another man. Her own brother. A man who told her that things would never be the same again after the war. And did not come back himself. Matty wanted to tell Kit what she knew – but it was not her secret.
Kit tried to describe what he meant by not happy. How the edginess and unease between his parents had infected him, the child. How he knew it was there, but thought it was normal.
‘They rubbed each other up the wrong way, although you would never guess from their behaviour in public. Then the war came and Father returned from it a changed man. That was after Uncle Edwin was dead.’
Kit cut himself off and was silent. After a few seconds he went on, ‘Did you know they had four children?’
‘Four children?’
‘Yes. We had another sister called Rose.’ It was growing dark and Kit moved away from the window. His voice was very bleak. ‘If you don’t mind, Matty, I don’t think I want to talk about this any more.’
Matty dropped her detached tone. ‘Please, please. If you have one ounce of affection for me, try.’ He was silent. ‘You must try, Kit.’
‘Rose drowned,’ he said, after a long minute. ‘In the river, by the boathouse, like you nearly did. She had been playing on the jetty by herself and Mother told Robbie that she would watch Rose for half an hour or so. But she didn’t, she went down to her garden and left Rose alone.’
‘Ah.’ Matty’s heart was beating hard and she expelled a long breath. ‘Yes?’
‘That was after my uncle was killed in the Somme. I’ve always thought the deaths drove her mad. She blamed herself for both. Firstly for badgering Father to wangle a commission for Uncle Edwin. He shouldn’t have, you see, but it’s always possible to fix things if you know the right people. Then Rose.’
‘In the garden?’ Matty whispered. ‘That garden?’
‘In the garden.’ Pause. ‘By the statue.’
‘How?’
‘She took a knife from the kitchen. She was so desperate to die that she slashed herself more than twenty times.’
The pause this time was longer. Kit ran a hand over his hair and his shoulders hunched. He seemed to be gathering strength for what he had to say. His gaze swung back to his wife, and locked onto hers.
‘Matty, she was so desperate to leave us that she even stabbed herself in the face.’