After the Armistice Ball

Chapter Five

Young men had died in their thousands, and I had known dozens and scores of them, sons of friends or lads from the village. I had mourned their deaths individually and collectively in the church Sunday after Sunday, year after year, and had stood in front of memorials – had even unveiled one – singing patriotic hymns and boiling with misery and rage. None of these deaths, however, not even young Sandy Masterton, to whom I had once fed broth when his mother was sick with a fever, stabbed at me like the death of Cara Duffy.

I take no pride in that. I loathe the grading of tragedy and the jostling for pre-eminence amongst the bereaved, that most disgusting example of the disgusting habit of claiming a starring role in any incident that touches one. I do not, therefore, mean to suggest either that my recent conversation with the girl made me peculiarly pained by her death or that one young girl, fair of face and gentle of birth, was materially different from thousands of coarser and plainer young men.

I wonder though. Might it be true that we are not really creatures of any imagination after all and that something, anything, happening under our noses necessarily affects us more deeply than something, anything, we merely hear about? I had hitherto suspected a grosser motive behind our menfolk’s reluctance to talk about the war; a selfishness, or worse a self-important chivalry, and had wondered if that was why they all seemed to disapprove so viscerally of the poets’ trying to make the rest of us understand. Now, I began to see that perhaps there was a gulf that just could not be crossed between those who had been there and seen with their own eyes and those who had waited at home. Why else would this death, sudden and shocking as it was, seem so much worse than what lay behind the names on the cenotaph?

These were the thoughts which occupied me as we drove up to the town of Gatehouse and unremarkably, typically I should almost say, they turned out to be quite wrong.

I expected to find Lena and Clemence installed in a bar parlour, smoky and dishevelled, perhaps even wrapped in blankets, with attendant police and servants talking in hushed voices. I hoped a comfortable landlady was bringing them soup and hot bottles for their feet and I steeled myself to be the one who must bring other kinds of comfort. It was with some initial relief then that Alec and I found the two of them, in the bar parlour at the Murray Arms to be sure, but looking quite fresh and somewhat indecently composed.

‘Lena,’ said Alec. Mrs Duffy turned with a start and looked at him, frozen, for what seemed like an age, then without moving her eyes she noticed me standing just behind and to one side of him and she held out her hand.

‘Dandy, my dear, I had completely forgotten you were coming. Have you been down to the cottage?’

‘Oh no,’ I whispered to myself. They did not know. I did not understand how this could be, but somehow, unbelievably, they had not heard, and telling them was to fall to me. I felt Alec begin to tremble beside me, although we were not touching. Perhaps I only saw his coat sleeve moving, or perhaps I felt the floor underneath my feet reverberate with his tremor. I had to speak.

‘Something has happened, Lena,’ I began, and then, my attention caught by a sound in the corner, I turned and saw a police sergeant, squashed discreetly and surely uncomfortably into a small chair, with his cap on one knee and his notebook open on the other. He had half-risen at my words and was regarding me with wide-open eyes. But if the police were here then…?

‘What?’ said Lena Duffy, her voice stretched dry. ‘What do you mean?’ I was utterly lost now. Did she know after all? She must.

‘Cara,’ I said.

‘What?’ said Lena Duffy again. I felt Alec reach out and take hold of my elbow, his fingers still trembling and cold through my sleeve. Lena had risen now but Clemence was shrinking back in her chair, her blank face as unreadable as ever.

‘You know, don’t you, do you?’ I said. ‘About the fire.’ Alec squeezed my arm again and a glance at the police sergeant gave me my answer. He was staring at me, with his mouth open.

‘What about it?’ said Lena. ‘What has happened? What are you talking about? Have they found…’ Her voice faded to a croak and she was silent.

Just then the comfortable landlady of my imagination – long apron, white cap and all – came to the doorway opposite and stood looking at all of us for a moment, before her eyes filled with tears and she retreated, mopping her face with a glass cloth. I felt dizzy, terrified that I should begin to laugh, and I wanted to turn and run, but I forced myself to walk towards Lena and take her hands.

‘We’ve just come from there,’ I said. ‘No one has found anything. It’s burnt to the ground.’ Odd the things one does without thinking. She, whom I should have been comforting, chafed my cold hands in her warm ones as though she were my mother and I a child, such a comfortable, familiar gesture and so wrong just then. I pulled against it and she let go of me. Then returning to her seat, she surveyed the tea-things on the table with another very familiar gesture, a deep breath in and the competent, calculating glance with which a matron decides whether what is left can be stretched or if more must be ordered. I am sure the offer of ‘Tea?’ got almost to her lips before she caught it and, at the gape I could not hide, bowed her head. I heard Alec turn and run out of the room behind me, knocking against the door jamb on his way. His footsteps pounded away down the flagged passageway to the front door and then could be heard disappearing along the pavement outside.

‘I should go and see,’ I said, gesturing vaguely behind me.

‘Would you, my dear?’ said Lena. ‘Poor Alec. If you would.’ I looked at her for a moment longer, then at the quiet policeman, then fearing again that I was about to laugh or scream or shake someone, I too turned and stumbled out.

He had gone quite a way, but was walking back towards me by the time I saw him. He waved, sat down on the broad low wall of a bridge and lit a cigarette, waiting for me to approach.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I began. Then I rubbed my face hard with my two hands, hoping to scrub away the tears before they fell. ‘I’m hopeless at this.’

‘At what?’ said Alec, sounding interested and even faintly amused. Far from trembling now, he too seemed horribly unperturbed.

‘At whatever you choose to name,’ I said. ‘I can’t imagine what possessed me, but I got the idea that she didn’t know anything had happened. I only hope she’s too upset to take it in. Clemence too.’

‘Dandy,’ said Alec, gently. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘I don’t even know,’ I wailed. ‘I’ve never… I felt so peculiar, that must be shock, is it? I mean, I was rattled already and then the whole atmosphere was so very odd. It’s not like in books and plays – tears for sadness and smiles for joy, is it? And it feels so different, when it’s someone one has only just spoken to and when there’s no battle, no dispatches. Are you all right?’ I asked, finally, feeling ashamed that what I was really asking was if he could drive me right back home again to Bunty and Hugh and away from all of this.

‘Dandy,’ said Alec again. ‘Listen to me very carefully and please believe what I say. I don’t know what is going on in that room.’ He waved his cigarette towards the hotel. ‘But it is not, believe me, it is not a doting mother and a loving sister suffering from shock. Something is very wrong here and you know it.’

I nodded slowly at first and then faster as my thoughts seemed to catch up with the rest of me.

‘I feel…’ I began, and gave up. ‘I’ve been thinking about Sandy Masterton from one of our farms, who died in the retreat from… Well, anyway, I knew him much better than Cara and I couldn’t see why this should be so much worse. But I suppose that’s it, isn’t it? There’s something wrong here.’

‘That’s not quite it,’ said Alec. ‘What you are feeling is exactly what I am feeling. I, unlike you, have felt it before.’ I looked at him, shaking my head slightly to show him that I did not know what he meant. And then all of a sudden I did, and my head began to nod instead.

‘It’s because we should have known, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘We should have guessed and we should have stopped it.’

‘And now it’s too late,’ said Alec, ‘and there is nothing worse than that.’ My moment of inspiration had passed and pedestrian logic seemed to reassert itself in me.

‘There’s no need for you to feel that way,’ I said.

‘Cara was my fiancee,’ said Alec, simply. ‘It’s seldom spoken of, although everyone knows about it. It’s what makes it bearable when one’s parents die, you know. And I’m sure it’s what makes it bearable for women to be widows. Have you never wondered why women make such comfortable widows and men such hopeless widowers?’ He had been gazing at the glowing end of his cigarette as he spoke, but now he raised his head and looked at me. ‘At the front, you know, if a letter came and it was a chap’s older brother? Well, that was bad, but we knew it was bearable. When a chap’s younger brother went, it was horror.’

‘Is that why the officers so much more often…’ I was going to say ‘went to pieces’ but stopped myself in time. This was the first time I had ever spoken to any man about the nuts and bolts of it all. Alec nodded. Then he brought himself back to the present. He took a last deep puff on his cigarette and threw it down into the river.

‘A mother and an elder sister who have just survived the fire that killed the baby?’ His voice grew hard. ‘They would be beside themselves. They would be clawing through the embers with their bare hands, or they would be asleep, unconscious. I’ve seen it countless times. The body just switches off like an electric lamp going out. Sometimes for days. What they would not be doing is sitting in a parlour miles away in fresh clothes, drinking tea, and attuned to the possibility of news.’

‘Couldn’t it be a kind of shock?’ I said, desperate to avoid what he seemed to be suggesting. ‘Couldn’t that be a kind of retreat in itself? Like sleeping? I mean, if there were anything going on, wouldn’t they try to act more as they should?’ I warmed to this idea. ‘Wouldn’t they put on a show of grief if they were hiding something?’ At that, though, I remembered Lena Duffy’s survey of the table and the offer of tea that she suppressed before she could utter it, the flare of panic in her eyes as she almost let it slip. ‘Or even if it did seem like only a show,’ I said, ‘couldn’t it be that their real grief strikes even them as so far from the way it is written in books that they feel they must try to…’ Alec was shaking his head, but before I could begin a fresh assault, he waved me into silence with a discreet gesture. The police sergeant was approaching.

‘Feeling more like it now, sir?’ he asked, then turned to me. ‘Can I just ask you what your plans are, madam? You were coming to stay, were you not? Will you put up at the Murray Arms, then?’

I stammered for a bit before I spoke. Of course there would be some official business to be gone through, I supposed, but I was no more than one of the many onlookers.

‘I’m sure Lena and Clemence would be grateful for it,’ said Alec softly. I was shocked. Of course it would suit our purposes to have me installed but it was a bit much, on no more evidence than our shared feeling that something was wrong.

‘The inquiry’ll be at Kirkcudbright, doubtless,’ the police sergeant went on. ‘In a few days’ time, a week at the most. If you could see your way clear to stay till then.’

‘Aren’t there friends they could go to?’ I said. ‘Surely they won’t stay in the hotel.’

The sergeant slid his cap back on his head and stood looking up and down the street, rubbing thoughtfully at the red mark from his hatband.

‘Well, Cardonness Castle is all shut up, madam, seeing Sir William’s away to London as usual in the springtime, and Lady Ardwell is practically bedridden since last winter, poor old lady. There’s always Commander Cochrane at Ruscoe, I suppose, but I don’t know if they’ve ever met.’

‘No, quite, of course,’ I said, before he ran through the whole county. Perhaps, after all, the anonymity of a country pub would be preferable to an invalid lady or Sir William’s dustsheets. I should stay. After all, Lena had an investigation and inquiry to get through and apparently no one around to help her do it.

‘And yourself, sir?’ said the sergeant, turning back to Alec.

‘Has anyone sent word to Edinburgh yet?’ Alec said. ‘Someone will have to tell her father.’

My bags were duly carried from the motor car into the inn and up to a small back bedroom. I assumed Lena and Clemence were already in the best rooms, but I was glad of the plain whitewashed walls and the brass bed with its cheerful quilt; my sense of guilt would not have withstood any luxury.

Before facing the Duffys again, I went to the post office to send a telegram to Hugh. I might have telephoned of course, but not wanting to enter into negotiations, certainly not wanting to bring on a command to come home, I thought a telegram would be more fitting.

The girl behind the desk was weeping.

‘Poor, poor soul,’ she said, shaking her head and letting large tears fall on to the blotter. I bit my lip and nodded. Then she sniffed and composed herself a little, looking expectantly at me through the grille with her pen at the ready.

‘I have no idea what to say,’ I said. I had never read one of these telegrams, thank heavens, and had no idea how they were usually couched.

‘Who is it for, madam?’ asked the girl, professionalism beginning to reassert.

‘Oh, no one,’ I said. ‘I mean, my husband. But no one close. To them, I mean. I just need to say that I’m staying to be with Mrs Duffy and why.’

She had got my measure.

‘“Dreadful fire at Reiver’s Rest,”’ she intoned with relish. ‘“Poor” – it’s Cara, isn’t it, madam? – “Poor Cara tragically lost. Staying in Gatehouse to comfort poor mother.”’ And so on. It became clear that the telegram was not her natural genre, but I managed in the end to remove most of the adverbs and settle on ‘perished’ as an acceptable midway point between her eulogies and my apparently shocking bluntness.

‘Fire at Duffys’ cott. Cara perished. Self unharmed. At Murray Arms Inn, Gatehouse with Mrs D. until further notice.’ She read back to me. ‘Love?’ she asked, pen quivering.

‘Love,’ I agreed, for a quiet life.

There was no sign of the Duffys in the parlour when I returned. The tea-things were gone and the table covered in what must be its usual garb of a dusty chenille cloth and a bowl of wax fruit. I crept along to the bar but, my nerve failing me at the door, decided to search out someone in the kitchen quarters.

‘There now,’ said the landlady, suddenly coming round a corner and almost bumping into me. ‘I wondered where you had got yourself to, madam. The doctor wants to see you.’ She surveyed me briefly and then pronounced her verdict. ‘You’re done in. What say you come and sit in my kitchen and wait for him there? That parlour’s a gloomy spot at the best of times.’ She steered me along the passageway and into the kitchen where the fresh smell of linen sheets drying off on a rack before the fire fought with the aroma of tonight’s stew beginning to bubble, the whole making a welcome oasis of comfort. She tucked me into a Windsor chair and set about tea.

‘I’m that glad you’re back,’ she said. ‘They just went to pieces. After you and the young man left. Jim Cairns left them for two minutes to come and speak to me and when he went back they had gone straight to pieces. Couldn’t say which was worse. The poor mother roaring and crying and the young one shaking all over like nothing on earth. And so he goes for you, Jim Cairns, and I sends the lad for the doctor to see can he give them something and gets them off upstairs to lie down and as soon as these sheets are aired they’ll be in their beds where they should be and maybe get some rest, eh?’

She sounded as relieved as I felt that the ladies had finally begun to behave as they ought, and she looked hopefully at me to see if I was about to break down too.

‘I don’t really know them all that well,’ I said, in my defence. ‘I just happened to be coming down on a visit.’

‘And a very good thing, madam,’ she said, putting a thick cup of dark tea down before me on the table. ‘Now, I’ll just need to get on if that’s all right.’ She sat down opposite me with a bowl of carrots and spread a newspaper for the scrapings. Soon a light spray of carrot juice reached me as she set about them and since my tweeds were flecked with orange and it was rather refreshing, I let it.

After a while we heard the stairs over our heads creak with a heavy step descending and presently a large man, in the rather collapsed tweeds so universally associated with the country doctor that one suspects there must be an outfitter somewhere supplying them, let himself into the kitchen.

‘Mrs Gilver?’ he asked, putting out his hand and taking mine. ‘Dr Milne.’ He sat heavily and shook his head a few times before speaking again. ‘I’ve settled them and left them something. A hot bath and a good night’s rest, Mrs McCall. You’ll can do more for the poor ladies than I can tonight.’ Mrs McCall abandoned her carrots without another word and, wiping her hands on her apron, she gathered up the sheets and left.

‘And you’ll stay, won’t you?’ he asked, once she had gone.

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘But you know, I’m not a close friend. I wonder if perhaps we should send for someone else.’

‘Mrs Duffy asked for you,’ he said. ‘More than once, she asked if Mrs Gilver was still here.’ This was curious.

‘What is going to happen?’ I asked. ‘And what did happen? Does anyone know?’

‘Well, there will be an inquiry,’ said Dr Milne. ‘But we’ll never know exactly. These wooden houses, you know. I never could understand why houses by the sea are so often made of wood. They dry out like kindling in the sea breeze.’

‘Is Mrs Duffy able to tell you anything?’ I said. ‘Or Clemence?’

‘Not a thing. They weren’t there. They had gone for a walk on the shore and the young lady stayed at home. Writing letters, they said. By the time they came back round the headland, the place was alight and the men were already there with their buckets. Futile. Futile. These wooden houses.’

‘Awful,’ I said. ‘One can’t imagine. And now an inquiry.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that,’ said the doctor. ‘Our Fiscal is a good man. A very gentle way with him. There’s a hard road ahead of the whole family, to be sure, but there will be no unpleasantness at the inquiry to make it worse.’

‘It was a curious thing,’ I ventured, ‘but when Mr Osborne and I arrived, they were so very calm I thought for a minute they didn’t know. And I’m afraid I must have confused them.’

‘Aye, I heard,’ he said. ‘Jim Cairns told me. I shouldn’t worry, though, madam. Shock is a funny one. Why, I saw things in the war you wouldn’t believe.’

‘Yes, I’m sure,’ I said, and sipped my tea in silence, uncertain whether the thought which had just struck me was my imagination or not. Did he too think that something was not right? There was a watchful and repressive air about him. Was he warning me that ‘the Fiscal’ would never dream of rocking a boatful of such distinguished ladies? That I should be careful not to either? Or was he right about shock, and Alec quite wrong? I was suddenly convinced that this was the case, and I flushed with shame at the thought of our muckraking. Wicked, repulsive. Poor Mrs Duffy and poor Clemence too; bewildered, so hurt and shocked that they had retreated into a kind of a stupor and all we could do in the meantime was point our fingers and suspect them of something we did not even have the courage to put a name to. Everyone in this village was weeping in sorrow along with them except for their so-called friends. At least Alec had an excuse: he was in shock too, however much he protested. But me? My behaviour? My suspicions? It was too disgusting, and I would have no further part in any of it. The silly misunderstanding about the diamonds – I had forgotten about the diamonds, to be honest – could all be resolved by Daisy without my help.