The Crimson Rooms (24 page)

“And now mine,” said Meredith, “also artistic, I’m afraid. Like mother, like son,” and she presented a scroll tied with a blue ribbon. Having unfurled it, Prudence rotated it a couple of times then held it at arm’s length and squinted before turning it outward so that we could all see. It was a piece of stiffened fabric with unbound edges, linen perhaps, painted with an abstract design in strong shades of red, orange, and brown, spots, zigzags, and stripes, which contrived to form some kind of unified whole that could, by a stretch of the imagination, be a face framed by symmetrical locks of hair, or perhaps it was something else entirely, a crest of some kind, or nothing at all.

“I found it in a market,” said Meredith. “Don’t you think it’s stunning? I believe it’s from Guiana. Whatever, it’s a completely original design. I thought it would be perfect in your room.”

Prudence’s bedroom in Clivedon Hall Gardens was as near a reproduction as she could manage of her old room at the cottage: sprigged wallpaper and white work cloths. The picture-rails were hung with a cross-stitch design behind glass, depicting a cottage garden, a couple of faded photographs of our stiffly Victorian Gifford forebears, and a reproduction of Constable’s
Hay Wain
. This new work of art (if such it was) would be glaringly out of place.

“Let me see,” said Grandmother, removing her spectacles and holding the fabric half an inch from her eyeballs. “Oh, the beautiful colors. And what a clear pattern.”

Prudence and Mother were in agreement on the subject of modern art. In order to qualify, a
great
painting had to be representational and worked with invisible brushstrokes. Ideally, a moral should be drawn from it, which made Holman Hunt’s
Light of the World
probably the most perfect picture in existence.
Modern
art was therefore summarily dismissed as lacking in skill and
crude
, the latter being a heinous crime only surpassed by lateness and blasphemy. However, this was her birthday, Meredith had given her a present (I think Prudence shared my suspicion that the gift had been chosen to perplex rather than to please), and she must be thanked.

“And will you put it up in your room?” demanded Meredith with the eagerness of a child. “Do you have a frame?”

“Perhaps I shall find one among some of my stored items in the attic,” said Prudence, setting the fabric aside. But she could not quite leave it alone and I saw her glance at it again and even stroke it while we waited for the dinner gong. Her head tilted and her lips pursed as she tried to decide whether or not she was being duped. When we filed into the dining room—Mother firmly gripping the half-f bottle in case the girls got hold of it—Prudence left the painting behind on the arm of her chair, but then, as we crossed the hall, went back to fetch it, saying that if we didn’t mind, she would hang it over the edge of the sideboard so that she could look at it during the meal.

“When is the next birthday?” asked Edmund, who was excused soup these days. “Mine’s on July 31.”

“And after that will be Evelyn’s, on August 14,” said Mother, who had recklessly poured another glass for herself and Prudence but just a thimbleful for Grandmother, Meredith, and me, as if we were all three underage.

“And how old will she be?”

“Goodness,” said Prudence, “we never ask a lady her age.”

“I shall be thirty-one,” I said.

There was a painful silence. “That means you’re older than Mommy,” said Edmund.

“But only by two years,” said Meredith. “And the thing about Evelyn is that she has crammed so much into her life already.”

Mother, at the end of the table, laid down her spoon and Min came forward to remove the bowls. We were on dangerous territory, and I waded in to change the subject. “You’ll never guess where I’ve been today.”

“Oh, good Lord, I forgot, you have been to the murder scene. How
fascinating
,” cried Meredith.

“We won’t want to hear about it at table, I think,” said Mother, wiping her mouth.

Grandmother spoke into the silence. “By the time I was thirty I had finished with the stage and was expecting you,” she told Mother.

“That’s it,” said Meredith, “this room is filled with exceptional women. I am in awe of you all.” Nobody else seemed to notice the irony of this remark made by a woman who had crossed the Atlantic to nurse behind the front lines and conceive a child out of wedlock.

“I’ve always missed it,” said Grandmother. “There’s nothing quite like the fear of that curtain going up and having to encounter the dark space on the other side. Now that’s what I call being alive, a lit stage and an audience in darkness. Oh, one is so aware of oneself quivering in the footlights and nothing else matters except that first word which will decide the fate of actor and audience. I was someone who always had to be in the light.”

“Which was your favorite part, did you say?”

“That would be Nora in
A Doll’s House
, which I played in Manchester.”

“And you wore such stunning costumes. Edmund loves the picture of you as Titania . . .”

“It was a very long time ago,” said Mother. “Why bring up the past? You have not acted for
years
, Mother.” Tears were brimming, and she laid down her knife and fork, put her hand to her head, and pushed back the chair. “I’m so sorry, Prudence, on your birthday . . . my head. It’s the heat. Forgive me, forgive me.” Then she was gone from the room and we heard the rush of her feet on the stairs.

Edmund was wide-eyed for a moment, but soon tucked into his mashed potato. Meanwhile, Meredith said: “Prudence and I are off to the Tate Gallery tomorrow. While you were upstairs getting changed, Evelyn, I made her promise to come. It’s such a pity you’re not free too.”

“I’ve never been to the Tate,” said Prudence, “one ought to make the most of being in London.”

“Of course, it’s work for me,” said Meredith. “I have to prepare for my next class with Hadley Waters and at the moment there’s no plumbing the depth of my ignorance.”

“I don’t expect I shall like everything in it,” said Prudence, “but one has to keep an open mind.” Suddenly, across the table, I met Meredith’s eyes and I was eleven again, at the back of class with my best friend Margaret Bagshott, struck by an agonizing fit of giggles. Meredith and I tried to suppress the laughter, we put our hands to our mouths and dabbed away our tears while Prudence looked from one to the other of us, smiling uncertainly: “What did I say that was so funny?”

Mother was not laughing
when I went upstairs half an hour later; she was at the dressing table, still wiping tears from her eyes. Despite the season, the windows were tight shut, the curtains drawn, the lamps lit, and there was a leather-bound album open on her lap, containing photographs of James and myself as children, solemn figures in intricate clothes, posed in the garden or a studio, the arm of the lanky girl invariably flung around the neck of her sturdy little brother. In one, James sat on my knee, his own legs so short that they stuck out dead straight, a coil of my hair falling onto his fist. He stared as if mesmerized into the camera; I was watching his face.

Keeping my distance, I perched on the edge of the bed and said briskly: “It was so good of Meredith to arrange a party.”

“You know I can’t stand birthdays. I cannot bear to count the passing years. Evelyn, it’s for your sake I feel so unhappy tonight.”

“Oh, Mother.” I took her cold hand and squeezed it. “Don’t be unhappy on my account.”

“You have missed out on so much. I wish you’d marry.”

She could have no idea how that night especially her lament touched a raw nerve. Springing to my feet, I said coldly: “On the other hand I have had a fascinating day, one such as few women, I think, have ever experienced. If I had a husband to care for and a clutch of babies I doubt if such a day would have been possible.”

She put the album aside and turned on me with equal force, very pale but with a gleam in her eye that may have been due to the unaccustomed champagne. “I don’t want to hear any more about your grubby life. You are willful and cruel because you insist on talking about work all the time, even though you know I can’t bear it. You have abandoned me. My life is in ruins and you will not help me.”

“What could I do to help, Mother?”

“You could be
here
. You could try to behave like a proper daughter. You could save me from having to deal with that terrible woman, day in, day out.”

“I shall soon be earning money at least.”

“I would sacrifice the money tomorrow if it meant I wouldn’t be so alone.”

“You have Prudence. You have Grandmother and the girls, and your bridge parties. Now you even have a grandchild, Edmund. You are better off than most when it comes to company.”

“I didn’t choose any of this. My life is nothing to what it used to be before the war. Can’t you see? All this has been thrust upon me against my wishes. And all that I loved, all that I strived for has been torn from me. Oh, if only James had lived. Instead he ruined everything.”

“What do you mean, he ruined everything? Mother, he was killed, he could hardly help that.”

She shot me a strange look, half angry, half frightened, then seemed to recover a little. “Of course. What I mean is, I can’t help it, Evelyn. I sometimes think you have taken his place—you have used his death to get what you want.”

She had never voiced her resentment so explicitly before and I think we were both shocked. “Or perhaps I’m keeping something of him alive,” I said shakily.

By way of an apology perhaps, she put out her hand and I pressed it reluctantly. Her lace sleeve came to a point on her knuckle and had tiny buttons along the cuff. When I was a child, it was considered one of my privileges to be called down to her bedroom to help with fastenings before she went out, but I was always sulky, because the task brought me up close to the side of her that was forever pulling away. Now she had allowed her hair to fall from its pins so that it was half tumbled down her back. From this angle, in this light, she might have been younger than me. For a moment, we watched each other, neither of us moving, neither of us able to break the silence. I felt dreary to my soul that this conversation, like so many others, had ended with us locked into positions of mutual disappointment, each incapable of being what the other wanted.

L
eah Marchant’s appeal was scheduled
for a ten-thirty hearing on Friday morning, before Recorder Martin Hestlethwaite. I arrived early to find no sign of Thorne or indeed the defendant, Leah Marchant, who was of course to be brought by prison van. The wait was torture for me, because I would not listen to the voice of reason within my head: You sent Thorne the papers. He has the facts of the case and they’re all he wants from you. Apart from that, you are nothing to him.

At ten precisely, Thorne strode in, immaculately turned out, ineffably calm, though perhaps a little warm after a brisk walk. Removing his hat, he ruffled his hair in a gesture I had come to anticipate. “How was the trip to the crime scene, Miss Gifford? I was so sorry not to see for myself. Perhaps I’ll wander up there next week. Could you spare the time to show me, do you think?”

Was he seriously proposing so intimate an expedition as a walk in the Chesham fields? I said: “It’s late. We should go down and see Leah Marchant at once. She should be here by now.”

“Lead the way.”

He followed so close that I distinctly felt his knee brush my skirt as we went downstairs. Fortunately, when we reached the cells, I had only to stand by and watch as the machine clicked into action for Leah Marchant’s benefit. And there on display were all the tricks he’d used on me: the frank smile, the eyes suffused with sympathy, the hearty handshake, the inclination of the head as he commiserated with her on the appalling treatment she had received thus far at the hands of the judiciary. “I promise that I shall do my level best, Mrs. Marchant, to ensure that you will walk free this very morning.”