A Place Of Safety(7)
It was the cruellest type of day imaginable in which to wake to anguish and remorse. Ann, curled up tight, arms straitjacketed round her body, agonising cramp in every limb, squinted at the lovely pattern of greyish leaves floating and shifting on her bedroom ceiling. Through the window she could see a rectangle of brilliant blue sky. The whole room was flooded with autumn sunshine.
Already the torture had begun. The whole dreadful business of the previous evening, powerfully animated and brilliantly lit as if on a cinema screen, running and rerunning through her mind. Herself climbing the attic stairs full of apprehension. Carlotta howling and throwing books and clothes around the room, her flight into the darkness. The quickly flowing water.
Today Ann would have to tell Lionel. She must tell him. He would want to know where Carlotta was. But, without knowing why, Ann knew she couldn’t reveal the whole truth.
Not that he wasn’t the most understanding of men. And to understand all, as she had so often been told, was to forgive all. He made endless and sometimes, she thought, foolish allowances for all the young people taken temporarily under his wing. Those to whom society had shown only a cruel indifference. The distraught and abandoned, the criminal and near criminal. She had always (with one exception) tried to welcome them into her home.
Ann hesitated because she knew Lionel would be bitterly disappointed in her. Even ashamed. And rightly so. What excuse could there possibly be for a woman in her late thirties, coming from a secure family background, comfortably off and living in a large, beautiful house to turn on a wretched creature who had taken refuge there and drive her into the night? Only the disappearance of a pair of earrings which she may or may not have taken. Which was no excuse at all.
Ann got out of bed, painfully straightening her bruised limbs. She put on her rose brocade slippers, stretched her arms to the ceiling then touched her toes, wincing.
Lionel would sleep for a while yet. He was home quite late last night. Ann decided to make herself some tea, take it to the library and work out just what she was going to say to him.
She was putting on her dressing gown when she heard the front door open and her daily help call out, ‘Mrs Lawrence? Hello? A lovely day.’
Ann hurried onto the landing, forcing a smile and some semblance of warmth into her voice. She leaned over the stairwell and called a greeting back. ‘Good morning, Hetty.’
Evadne Pleat, of Mulberry Cottage, The Green, had just concluded the most important business of her day, namely the loving care and maintenance of her six Pekinese dogs. Brushing, washing, clipping, feeding, worming and walking. Their temperatures had to be taken, their collars checked for cleanliness and comfort, their beautiful creamy fur closely investigated lest any foreign body should have dared to trespass.
Once this elaborate routine was over, Evadne had her breakfast (usually some porridge and an Arbroath Smokie) then placed a white Kashmir geranium in the kitchen window. This signalled that she was ‘at home’ and from then on her day was so crammed with incident she had hardly a moment to breathe. The reason for her popularity was simple. Evadne was a miraculously good listener.
It is rare to come across someone more interested in others than in themselves and the inhabitants of Ferne Basset were quick to appreciate Evadne’s remarkable qualities. She always seemed to have the time to give people her absolute attention. Her eyes never strayed towards the face of her pretty grandmother clock nor did its sweet chimes ever distract. Whatever the subject under discussion, she would always appear sympathetic. And totally discreet.
Inevitably people started to seek her out. The most comfortable chair in her cluttered little sitting room was always occupied by some troubled or excited soul getting it all off their chest while being sustained by shortbread tails and Earl Grey. Or, after 6 p.m., Noilly Prat and Epicure cheese footballs.
Evadne never gave advice, which, if they’d thought about it, would have surprised her visitors for they always left feeling comforted, occasionally going as far as to say they could now see their way clear. Sometimes they even regarded the people they had come to complain bitterly about in an entirely different light.
This day, of course, they talked about nothing but supposed events on the river bank. Lack of any solid evidence did not hold back a flood of almost Gothic extravagance. Not that there was anything to go on, she must understand. The vaguest of stories, my dear. Apparently no one actually heard anything. Even so - no smoke without fire. By the time Evadne’s lunch break arrived she was rather regretting that she had no writing talent for she had enough melodramatic narrative to keep a soap opera going for the next ten years.