The letters were finished. It was Thursday morning, and Ellen sat back in her chair, flexed her aching fingers, and gazed out of the library window. On the lawn, the girls were laughing together. A minute ago Geenie had looked like she was scrubbing the grass clean: she’d been on her hands and knees, knuckles working the dusty ground, while Diana stood over her, proclaiming something with one arm stretched elegantly into the air. Some game or other, Ellen thought: it was good to see her daughter so engaged with another girl; it certainly made a change from hanging around rooms, waiting for her mother to do or say something. Not that Geenie had been hanging around much since they’d had the conversation about James’s death. Ellen wished she’d been able to say more to her daughter on that subject, but somehow there were no words for it. And there was also the sense, she reflected now, taking another swig of her gin and it – a pre-lunch drink wasn’t so out of the ordinary, was it? – that James wasn’t much to do with Geenie. He wasn’t her father, after all. He was Ellen’s lover. His death was her business.
Pulling the final page from the typewriter, she set it on the pile. Then she finished her drink, pushed back her chair, and carried the manuscript from the room.
She was so surprised to find Crane’s studio empty that she marched directly to where the girls were playing on the lawn. They saw her coming and Geenie pressed her lips together.
‘Where’s your father?’ Ellen asked Diana.
For an answer she received a shrug and a smile. She looked from girl to girl, and Geenie slid behind Diana and began to laugh.
‘What’s the matter with you?’
‘She’s just excited,’ said Diana, ‘about the play.’
‘What play?’
‘The play I’ve written. We’re performing it tomorrow morning. Eleven o’clock sharp. On the lawn.’
‘Everyone’s invited,’ said Geenie, peeping over her friend’s shoulder.
Ellen gazed at Diana, and the girl gazed back, her dark eyes amused, her face composed. Eventually Ellen turned and walked back to the studio, leaving the girls whispering behind her like lovers.
. . . .
Inside, she sat in Crane’s armchair with the manuscript on her lap and wished she’d thought to fetch another gin. She had a notion that she would wait here until Crane returned, and she might need another drink. Ellen hadn’t given much thought to what she would do when he did arrive; she only knew that she wanted him to see the letters, now they were finished. They’d managed to avoid each other almost completely since he’d got back from London on Monday night. By the time he’d climbed into their bed in the dark, she’d had time to think, and her urge to scream and slap him very hard had waned. Anyway, what would she have said, exactly? I was snooping in your wastepaper basket and I found this? Or, I was looking for the novel you obviously haven’t written and I came across these – words? She couldn’t admit she’d been prying, and even if she did, he would have said it was just a poem, something he’d made up. So she’d clenched her body into a tight bundle on the edge of the bed and pretended to sleep.
Crane had hidden in his studio for most of the next day, and she’d locked herself in the library, brooding over the letters, drinking too much gin, and then falling asleep in her chair, waking to find herself covered in sweat and ravenously hungry. At dinner she’d concentrated on filling her gasping stomach with Kitty’s admittedly rather tasty chicken pie while Crane’s eye twitched like some trapped insect. But by Wednesday morning Ellen was thinking of going to Robin again. After lunch, during which Crane revealed his busy schedule of talks for the Party, telling her they were to begin next week in Rochdale (where was that? she hadn’t even bothered to ask), she’d taken the Lanchester into Petersfield and parked by the market square. Walking down the lane to the hairdressers’ shop, smelling the mixture of carbolic and blood from the butcher’s open door, she told herself that perhaps she would just book another appointment after all, then go straight back and face Crane and tell him it was over. Or perhaps she could cry a little, and relations would thaw. But when she walked through the door and saw Robin sitting at the back of the empty shop, a penny paper spread across his solid knees, she’d known exactly what would happen. If Crane’s blood was heavy with wanting for the cook, why shouldn’t she spend a little time with Robin? In the back room, he’d kept the wireless on, and his knowledgeable hands had slowly stroked her breasts to the rhythms of the Afternoon Band Hour. Just as he was sliding his fingers beneath her French knickers, she stopped him and said, ‘I want you for the whole night.’
It had been expensive, of course. There was the room at the Royal Oak in Midhurst, where – after she’d telephoned Crane and told him she was too drunk to drive home and was spending the night at Laura’s – they’d signed in as Mr and Mrs Crane; and Robin had still charged by the hour. But it had been worth it, she decided, as she rose from the chair to place the manuscript on Crane’s desk, over his latest copy of the DailyWorker. It had been worth it, because since she’d got back to the cottage at ten o’clock this morning (and Crane hadn’t been anywhere to be seen, even then), her head had been marvellously clear. Clear enough to finish work on the manuscript, and to add a note between the title page and the first letter:
To the memory of James Holt, my greatest love.
With this book, I ask for forgiveness.
– Ellen Steinberg
James’s memory was the most important thing, after all. It was the thing she had to keep safe from now on. Crane had distracted her from it. At least, that was how it had seemed when she’d typed the dedication. She could always, she thought, change things later.
Leaving the pile of paper on the desk, she walked out of the studio and into the sunshine. She wouldn’t wait for Crane, she decided. Let him find the letters there, just as she’d found his scrap of a poem. She wouldn’t even wait for lunch. She’d drive into Petersfield straight away, buy flowers for the cottage from Gander’s, perhaps stop at the White Hart for a drink, and then, if she still felt like it, drop by the hairdressers’ once more.