Chapter 7

 

Edith and Julia sat in her room–the sitting room that she’d created for herself upstairs when she and Archie had started living together–when the arrangement between them had been tentative and new, and they’d been trying to create some sort of structure. It had later made them both laugh–as if it was possible to divide your lives up like lodgers in the same boarding house.

Julia had telephoned and insisted that rather than Edith coming up, she would drive down to the village and see her. Edith protested, but then fell silent. She could understand, really, Julia’s desperation to escape the house for a while.

“Do you feel more settled here in Ellbeck these days?” Julia must have read her mind.

Or else, she was desperate to change the subject. For ages now, they’d mulled over and dissected the possible ways and reasons for Giles’s death.

“No,” Edith answered, startling herself with her reply. She amended it. “I’m more settled. But I’m settled in an impermanent way. I was just drifting before the…breakdown. No more drifting now. I was all for upping and leaving more or less straightaway after coming out of hospital, after the business of Mrs. Butler…well, I couldn’t just go, not straight away. I think anything I’d done then, any decisions I’d taken, would have been the wrong ones.

Julia raised her eyebrows, “But, now? she asked.

“Honestly, Julia, I don’t know what I’m going to do yet, but next spring I am going to make a change. Maybe a big change or maybe just study something, I don’t know, maybe just a night-class.

She laughed. “Yes, I know I am far too ancient to think of doing such a thing; but I wouldn’t be the first. Things are changing for us women, you know. Quite a few are going to university–able to get a proper degree at last. I hear some of those women-hating old professors even accept them now, women students and graduates. ”

She tailed off. What was she doing being so flippant? That was what came from trying to fill the gaps in conversation all the time.

Julia’s complexion changed before Edith’s eyes. She became white and her eyes widened and Edith saw that the loss of Giles had hit her anew. She looked even more distraught than she had when Edith had come round the other morning–the morning Giles had been shot. “We were trying, you know, trying to make things better between us,” she said.

“I know,” said Edith. She hesitated. This was difficult. “Were you able to, you know, forgive him?”

Julia knelt in front of the fire, lit earlier by Hannah. Already sometimes, though the days were warm, the evenings were cool.

“I don’t know. I was making a monumental effort. To be honest, so was Giles. It was all a bit unreal–the way we were with each other. Polite, careful…you know.”

She put her hands on her knees to help herself stand and rubbed them together and then down the side of her skirt.

“Time would have made that clear, whether or not it would have been successful. I’m no saint, you know, Edith. There were times in the past year that I’ve hated him and times when I have wanted to get my own back–to hurt him a fraction of what he hurt me.”

She looked straight at Edith, and her eyes in the light from the fire and the lamp looked glittering and strange.

Edith had drawn the curtains. It wasn’t yet dark, but the day had been dull and she needed to shut it out. She was uneasy at Julia’s words. As always with her, the discomfort was physical, almost indistinguishable from nausea. She needed to change the subject.

Giles’s funeral was going to be next week. The boys were home and from what Edith had seen, were forming a protective shield around their mother. Inspector Green seemed to be always there, with Sergeant Brown though she knew that was an exaggeration. Of course he wasn’t always there.

Giles had owned an estate–there would be an enormous amount of sorting out to be done; and impossible as it seemed to even be thinking about such prosaic matters, they would have to be thought about. The estate wasn’t in the same league as the Arbuthnot’s, but it comprised a substantial farm, some of which was let out to tenant farmers. According to the word in the village shop, the tenants and the farm manager had been visited by the inspector and his sergeant.

Edith knew too that people in the area had wondered why Giles had really needed a farm manager. Why hadn’t he taken on the role himself? He’d been a fit man and surely that was what he had been brought up to do? She and Julia had never really discussed it. But, it seemed Yorkshire had not been enough for Giles since the war. He had needed to be in London at least for a substantial part of the time. What Edith knew of his business interests were hazy, the only thing she was sure about was that he’d developed a keen interest in the aviation industry after the war.

“Is Inspector Greene still giving you trouble,” Edith asked now.

Julia looked down and played with the spoon in the sugar bowl, lifting it up and staring as she let the sugar fall back into the bowl.

“Well, I don’t think he likes me, that’s for sure. And he trusts me as far as he could throw me.”

Edith moved the sugar bowl out of her friend’s way, and Julia half-smiled at her.

“I don’t think that’s personal, you know,” she said. “I don’t think he likes me either, he certainly made no friends in this house when he suspected Archie of Mrs. Butler’s murder. It’s tempting to say he doesn’t like women, but Archie couldn’t stand him either at the time, and that can’t be because of his not liking women.”

Julia stood up. “I think it’s time I went home, Edith. You know I don’t think he’s too bad. He was so good with Bea. He’s a policeman first and he’s one of those people able to put things in separate compartments, I think. He’s very single-minded and doesn’t set much store in making friends of the general public.”

 

Edith knew as she went to bed that it would be a sleepless night but at least, that didn’t send her into a downward spin as it would have in the days before she’d learnt–the hard way–a bit more about how the mind worked and how it could trick you.

Get up, that was the best answer.

She made cocoa and sat in the sitting room. What had started out as an irritating niggle in the back of her mind, disturbing her rest now became clearer. She’d had a conversation with Julia, early in the spring. They’d met in Ripon, a planned restful day out, but somehow the mood had been off-key from the beginning. Still ready to look at herself first, when fault was to be found, it had taken a while for Edith to recognise it was Julia who was quieter and more preoccupied than usual. There was usually never an awkward silence between them, but something was different as they sat with cups of coffee in a hushed, moribund tearoom. The silence was such that you couldn’t even talk and have a laugh about the place.

Edith had felt a prickle of sweat on her top lip and glanced at Julia. She was staring ahead and Edith had an odd feeling as though they were poised on the edge of something.

“Things aren’t great, you know, Edith.”

Edith nodded.

“I mean between Giles and me–obviously,”

Edith felt the clichés push their way into her mind…it’ll take time…it’ll get better…it was bound to be hard for a while. But, she managed to bite them back. “What’s the most difficult bit?” she asked. Maybe it was a stupid question, but it was her best effort.

“The most difficult thing is that he’s become restless again. It frightens me, Edith, because when I look back now at last year, there were so many signs that things weren’t right. When I look back, actually, I’m so angry with myself for being so…so stupid. He was always irritable with me at that time. Nothing I did was right. When I found out about his affair, that was what made me screaming mad, that he’d turned me into the villain.

“But, I suppose that’s the perfect smokescreen in a way. He had me looking at myself all the time, you see, so I couldn’t see he was the one who had really changed. He isn’t like that now, not irritable with me, I mean.”

Her words, though almost whispered, still resonated in the somnolent atmosphere of the place. The waitress was aged and worn and Edith had almost expected the lemon cake to taste of dust, but it didn’t, it was delicious.

Edith wasn’t sure what to say. She thought she understood a reasonable amount about human relationships, but the thing was, she’d never been married, never lived with a man, so there would be huge gaps in her experience, there must be.

“Maybe now you are reading more into his moods though, you know, as a way of making sure you don’t miss the signs again or something.”

Julia smiled. “Yes, how to go from heedless to paranoid in three easy steps. You might be right. I am probably gauging his mood all the time, looking for tell-tale signs.”

“Don’t do that,” Edith heard herself blurt it out and bit her lip. “It was like that when I was in St. Bride’s. I always felt like my every mood was being judged. And I don’t think that was just my own mental condition. It’s what the nurses and the warders did, it is their job to see whether the patients were up or down, manic, talking too much or too wildly or too silent, morose…depressed.

“It’s terrible, you get so self-conscious, you almost forget what it’s like to feel like yourself. It puts an awful strain on you–the inability to just be–you know, quiet sometimes, irritable, bored. They’re all normal things, but not if you’re under scrutiny.

“I know this isn’t about me, but there were times when I went into that dayroom in St. Bride’s though I would have given anything for just a bit of peace and quiet on my own. I was frightened that they would think she’s depressed, withdrawn, write it down in their report book…”

“I try to keep it to myself. You’d be proud of me, Edith. I’ve become a great actress. But, Giles is restless whether I’m paranoid or not, and I dread to think of the reason behind that restlessness.

“I don’t know whether he is seeing that woman again or he is thinking about seeing her again, either would be a disaster. Then, he gets so angry, so worked up about the state of the country; what needs doing. He seems to have all the answers or knows people who have all the answers. These political friends are shadowy, back-door men, too, not your ordinary MP.”

“You obviously don’t feel as though you can ask him about any of this?”

Julia shook her head. “Come on, let’s talk about something else. I’m being a complete wet blanket. Tell me to shut up.”

“Shut up,” Edith said and it had been the right response. They could have talked about Julia’s nebulous feelings of unease all morning and it wouldn’t have made a blind bit of difference. But, it had crept under her eiderdown of sleepiness tonight.

After the cocoa, Edith had settled; somehow the racing thoughts of earlier had been banished. As always, when this happened these days, it seemed like a triumph.