Scold's Bridle

*3*

Jack was working in his studio when Sarah's key finally grated in the lock at around eleven o'clock. He looked up as she passed his open door. "Where have you been?"

She was very tired. "At the Hewitts'. They gave me supper. Have you eaten?" She didn't come in, but stood in the doorway watching him.

He nodded absent-mindedly. Food was a low priority in Jack's life. He jerked his head at the canvas on the easel. "What do you think?"

How much simpler it would be, she thought, if she were obtuse, and genuinely misunderstood what he was trying to achieve in his work. How much simpler if she could just accept what one or two critics had said, that it was pretentious rubbish and bad art.

"Joanna Lascelles presumably."

But not a Joanna Lascelles that anyone would recognize, except perhaps in the black of her funeral weeds and the silver gold of her hair, for Jack used shape and colour to paint emotions, and there was an extraordinary turbulence about this painting, even in its earliest stage. He would go on now for weeks, working layer on layer, attempting through the medium of oils to build and depict the complexity of the human personality. Sarah, who understood his colour-coding almost as well as he did, could interpret much of what he had already blocked in. Grief (for her mother?), disdain (for her daughter?), and, all too predictably, sensuality (for him?).

Jack watched her face. "She's interesting," he said.

"Obviously."

His eyes narrowed angrily. "Don't start," he murmured. "I'm not in the mood."

She shrugged. "Neither am I. I'm going to bed."

"I'll work on the jacket tomorrow," he promised grudgingly. He made a living of sorts by designing book jackets, but the commissions were few and far between because he rarely met deadlines. The disciplines imposed by the profit motive infuriated him.

"I'm not your mother, Jack," she said coolly. "What you do tomorrow is your own affair."

But he was in the mood for a row, probably, thought Sarah, because Joanna had flattered him. "You just can't leave it alone, can you? No, you're not my mother, but by God you're beginning to sound like her."

"How odd," she said with heavy irony, "and I always thought you didn't get on with her because she kept telling you what to do. Now I'm tarred with the same brush, yet I've done the exact opposite, left you to work things out for yourself. You're a child, Jack. You need a woman in your life to blame for every little thing that goes wrong for you."

"Is this babies again?" he snarled. "Dammit, Sarah, you knew the score before you married me, and it was your choice to go through with it. The career was everything, remember? Nothing's changed. Not for me, anyway. It's not my fault if your bloody hormones are screaming that time's running out. We had a deal. No children."

She eyed him curiously. After all, she thought, Joanna must have been less accommodating than he had hoped. Well, well! "The deal, Jack, for what it's worth, was that I would support you until you established yourself. After that, all options were open. What we never considered, for that I blame myself because I relied on my own artistic judgement, was that you might never establish yourself. In which circumstance, I suspect, the deal is null and void. So far, I have kept you for six years, two years before marriage and four afterwards, and the choice to marry was as much yours as mine. As far as I remember we were celebrating your first major sale, your only major sale," she added. "I think that's fair, don't you? I can't recall your selling a canvas since."

"Spite doesn't suit you, Sarah."

"No," she agreed, "any more than behaving like a brat suits you. You say nothing's changed, but you're wrong, everything's changed. I used to admire you. Now I despise you. I used to find you amusing. Now you bore me. I used to love you. Now I just feel sorry for you." She smiled apologetically. "I also used to think you'd make it. Now I don't. And that's not beause I think any less of your painting, but because I think less of you. You have neither the commitment nor work discipline to be great, Jack, because you always forget that genius is only one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent sheer, bloody graft. I'm a good doctor, not because I have an especial talent for diagnosis, but because I work my fingers to the bone. You're a rotten artist, not because you lack talent, but because you're too damn lazy and too damn snobbish to get down on your hands and knees with the rest of us and earn your reputation."

The dark face split into a sardonic grin. "Hewitt's doing, I suppose? A cosy little supper with Cock Robin and his wife, and then it's dump on Jack. Jesus, he's a easy little toad. He'd be in your bed quicker than inking if sweet little Mary and the kiddiwinkles weren't guarding his door."

"Don't be absurd," she said coldly. "It's your doing entirely. I ceased having any feelings for you whatsoever the day I had to refer Sally Bennedict for an abortion. I draw the line at being asked to approve the murder of your bastards, Jack, particularly by a selfish bitch like Sally Bennedict. She enjoyed the irony of it all, believe me."

He stared at her with something like shock, and she saw that for once she had scored a direct hit. He hadn't known, she thought, which was something in his favour at least. "You should have told me," he said inadequately.

She laughed with genuine amusement. "Why? You weren't my patient, Sally was. And, sure as eggs is eggs, she wasn't going to go to term with your little bundle of joy and lose her chance with the RSC. You can't play Juliet six months pregnant, Jack, which is what she would have been when the run started. Oh, I did my bit, suggested she talk it through with you, suggested she talk it through with a counsellor, but I might have been pissing in the wind for all the good it did. She'd have preferred cancer, I think, to an unwanted pregnancy." Her smile was twisted. "And let's face it, we both knew what your reaction would be. It's the only time I've felt confident that the wretched foetus, were it born, would be rejected by both parties. I passed the buck on to the hospital and they had her in and it out within two weeks."

He swirled his brush aimlessly around the colours on his palette. "Was that the reason for the sudden move down here?"

"Partly. I had a nasty feeling Sally would be the first of many."

"And the other part?"

"I didn't think the wilds of Dorset would appeal to you. I hoped you'd stay in London."

"You should have told me," he said again. "I never was very good at taking hints."

"No."

He put the palette and the brush on a stool and started to wipe his hands with a kitchen towel dipped in turpentine. "So how come the year's grace? Charity? Or malice? Did you think it would be more fun to cast me adrift down here than in London where I'd be assured of a bed?"

"Neither," she said. "Hope. Misplaced, as usual." She glanced at the canvas.

He followed her gaze. "I had tea with her. Nothing more."

"I believe you."

"Why so angry then? I'm not making a scene because you had supper with Robin."

"I'm not angry, Jack. I'm bored. Bored with being the necessary audience that your ridiculous ego requires. I sometimes think that was the real reason you married me, not for security but because you needed somebody else's emotion to stimulate your creativity." She gave a hollow laugh. "In that case you should never have married a doctor. We see too much of it at work to play it all out again at home."

He studied her closely. "That's it then, is it? My marching orders? Pack your bags, Jack, and never darken my door again."

She smiled the Mona Lisa smile that had first bewitched him. He thought he could predict exactly what she was going to say. It's your life, make your own decisions. For Sarah's strength and her weakness was her belief that everyone was as confident and single-minded as she was.

"Yes," she said, "that's it. I made up my mind that if you ever went near Sally again I'd call it quits. I want a divorce."

His eyes narrowed. "If this was about Sally, you'd have given me an ultimatum two weeks ago. I made no secret of where I was going."

"I know," she said wearily, staring at the painting again. "Even your betrayals demand an audience now."

He was gone when she came downstairs the next morning. There was a note on the kitchen table:

Send the divorce papers c/o Keith Smollett. You can find yourself another solicitor. I'll be going for a fifty-fifty split so don't get too attached to the house. I'll clear the studio as soon as I've found somewhere else. If you don't want to see me, then don't change the locks. I'll leave my key behind when I've retrieved my stuff.

Sarah read it through twice then dropped it in the rubbish bin.

Jane Marriott, the receptionist at the Fontwell surgery, looked up as Sarah pushed open the door of the empty waiting-room. Sarah covered Fontwell on Monday afternoons and Friday mornings and, because she was more sympathetic than her male colleagues, her sessions were usually busy ones. "There's a couple of messages for you, dear," said Jane. "I've left them on your desk."

"Thanks." She paused by the desk. "Who's first?"

"Mr. Drew at eight forty-five and then it's hectic until eleven thirty. After that, two home visits, I'm afraid, but I've told them not to expect you before midday."

"Okay."

Jane, a retired teacher in her sixties, eyed Sarah with motherly concern. "No breakfast again, I suppose?"

Sarah smiled. "I haven't eaten breakfast since I left school."

"Hm, well, you look washed out. You work too hard, dear. Doctoring's like any other job. You should learn to pace yourself better."

Sarah put her elbows on the desk and propped her chin on her hands. "Tell me something, Jane. If heaven exists, where exactly is it?" She looked for all the world like one of the eight-year-olds Jane had once taught, puzzled, a little hesitant, but confident that Mrs. Marriott would know the answer.

"Goodness! No one's asked me a question like that since I stopped teaching." She plugged in the kettle and spooned coffee into two cups. "I always told the children it was in the hearts you left behind. The more people there were who loved you, the more hearts would hold your memory. It was a devious way of encouraging them to be nice to each other." She chuckled. "But I thought you were a non-believer, Sarah. Why the sudden interest in the afterlife?"

"I went to Mrs. Gillespie's funeral yesterday. It was depressing. I keep wondering what the point of it all is."

"Oh dear. Eternal truths at eight thirty in the morning." She put a cup of steaming black coffee in front of Sarah. "The point to Mathilda Gillespie's life might not emerge for another five generations. She's part of a line. Who's to say how important that line might be in years to come?"

"That's even more depressing," said Sarah gloomily. "That means you have to have children to give meaning to your life."

"Nonsense. I haven't any children but I don't feel it makes me any less valuable. Our lives are what we make them." She didn't look at Sarah as she spoke, and Sarah had the feeling that the words were just words, without meaning. "Sadly," Jane went on, "Mathilda made very little of hers. She never got over her husband running out on her and it made her bitter. I think she thought people were laughing at her behind her back. Which, of course, a lot of us were," she admitted honestly.

"I thought she was a widow." How little she really knew about the woman.

Jane shook her head. "Assuming he's still alive, then James is her widower. As far as I know they never bothered with a divorce."

"What happened to him?"

"He went to Hong Kong to work in a bank."

"How do you know?"

"Paul and I took a holiday in the Far East about ten years after he and Mathilda separated, and we bumped into him by accident in a hotel in Hong Kong. We'd known him very well in the early days because he and Paul went through the war together." She gave a quirky little smile. "He was happy as Larry, living amongst the other expatriates, and quite unconcerned about his wife and daughter back home."

"Who was supporting them?"

"Mathilda was. Her father left her very well provided for, which was a shame, I sometimes thought. She'd have been a different woman if she'd had to use that brain of hers to keep the wolf from the door." She tut-tutted. "It's bad for the character to have everything handed to you on a platter."

Well, that was certainly true, thought Sarah, if Jack was anything to go by. Fifty-bloody-fifty, she thought wrathfully. She'd see him in hell first. "So when did he leave her? Recently?"

"Good heavens, no. It was about eighteen months after they married. Well over thirty years ago, anyway. For a year or two we had letters from him, then we lost touch. To be honest, we found him rather tiresome. When we met in Hong Kong he'd taken to the bottle in a big way and he became very aggressive when he got drunk. We were both rather relieved when the letters dried up. We've never heard from him again."

"Did Mathilda know he'd written to you?" Sarah asked curiously.

"I really couldn't say. We'd moved to Southampton by then and had very little to do with her. Mutual friends mentioned her from time to time, but other than that we lost touch completely. We only came back here five years ago when my poor old chap's health broke down and I took a decision that fresh Dorset air had to be better for him than the polluted city rubbish in Southampton."

Paul Marriott suffered from chronic emphysema and his wretched wife agonized over his condition. "It was the best thing you could have done," said Sarah firmly. "He tells me he's been much better since he came home to his roots." She knew from past experience that Jane wouldn't be able to let the subject drop once she'd embarked upon it and contrived to steer her off it. "Did you know Mathilda well?"

Jane thought about that. "We grew up together-my father was the doctor here for many years and Paul was her father's political agent for a time-Sir William was the local MP-but I honestly don't think I knew Mathilda at all. The trouble was I never liked her." She looked apologetic. "It's awful to say that about someone who's dead but I refuse to be hypocritical about it. She was quite the nastiest woman I've ever met. I never blamed James for deserting her. The only mystery was why he married her hi the first place."

"Money," said Sarah with feeling.

"Yes, I think it must have been," Jane agreed. "He was very much poor gentry, heir to nothing but a name, and Mathilda was beautiful, of course, just like Joanna. The whole thing was a disaster. James learnt PDQ that there were some things worse than poverty. And being dictated to by a virago who held the purse strings was one of them. He hated her."

One of the messages on Sarah's desk was from Ruth Lascelles, a short note, presumably put through the surgery door the previous evening. She had surprisingly childish writing for a girl of seventeen or eighteen.

'Dear Dr. Blakeney, Please can you come and see me at Granny's house tomorrow (Friday). I'm not ill but I'd like to talk to you. I have to be back at school by Sunday night. Thanking you in anticipation. Yours sincerely, Ruth Lascelles."

The other was a telephoned message from Detective Sergeant Cooper. "Dr. Blakeney's call drawn to DS Cooper's attention this morning. He will contact her later in the day."

It was nearly three o'clock before Sarah found time to call in at Cedar House. She drove up the short gravel drive and parked in front of the dining-room windows which faced out towards the road on the lefthand side of the house. It was a Georgian building in yellowy-grey stone, with deep windows and high-ceilinged rooms. Far too big for Mathilda, Sarah had always thought, and very inconvenient for a woman who, on bad days, was little better than an invalid. Her one concession to poor health had been the introduction of a stair-lift which had allowed her continued access to the upper floor. Sarah had once suggested that she sell up and move into a bungalow, to which Mathilda had replied that she wouldn't dream of any such thing. "My dear Sarah, only the lower classes live in bungalows which is why they are always called Mon Repos or Dunroamin. Whatever else you do in life, never drop your standards."

Ruth came out as she was opening her car door. "Let's talk in the summer-house," she said jerkily. She didn't wait for an answer but set off round the corner of the house, her thin body, dressed only in tee-shirt and leggings, hunched against the biting north wind that was swirling the autumn leaves across the path.

Sarah, older and more susceptible to the cold, retrieved her Barbour from the back seat and followed. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of Joanna watching her from the dark depths of the dining-room. Had Ruth told her mother she'd asked Sarah to call, Sarah wondered, as she tramped across the lawn in the girl's wake. And why so much secrecy? The summer-house was a good two hundred yards from Joanna's listening ears.

Ruth was lighting a cigarette when Sarah joined her amongst the litter of art deco cane chairs and tables, relics from an earlier-happier?-age. "I suppose you're going to lecture me," she said with a scowl, pulling the doors to and flopping on to a chair.

"What about?" Sarah took another chair and folded the Barbour across her chest. It was bitterly cold, even with the doors closed.

"Smoking."

Sarah shrugged. "I'm not in the habit of lecturing."

Ruth stared at her with moody eyes. "Your husband said Granny called you her scold's bridle. Why would she do that if you didn't tick her off for nagging?"

Sarah looked out of the windows to where the huge cedar of Lebanon, after which the house was named, cast a long shadow on the grass. As she watched, the blustery wind drove a cloud across the sun and wiped the shadow away. "We didn't have that sort of relationship," she said, turning back to the girl. "I enjoyed your grandmother's company. I don't recall any occasion when a ticking-off would have been appropriate."

"I wouldn't have liked being called a scold's bridle."

Sarah smiled. "I found it rather flattering. I believe she meant it as a compliment."

"I doubt it," said the girl bluntly. "I suppose you know she used the bridle on my mother when my mother was a child?" She smoked the cigarette nervously, taking short, rapid drags and expelling the smoke through her nose. She saw Sarah's disbelief. "It's true. Granny told me about it once. She hated people crying, so whenever Mum cried she used to lock her in a cupboard with that thing strapped to her head. Granny's father did it to her. That's why she thought it was all right."

Sarah waited but she didn't go on. "That was cruel," she murmured.

"Yes. But Granny was tougher than Mum and, anyway, it didn't matter much what you did to children when Granny was young, so being punished by wearing a bridle was probably no different from being thrashed with a belt. But it was awful for my mother." She crushed the cigarette under her foot. "There was no one to stand up for her and take her side. Granny could do what she liked whenever she liked."

Sarah wondered what the girl was trying to tell her. "It's an increasingly common problem, I'm afraid. Men, under stress, take their problems out on their wives. Women, under stress, take theirs out on their children, and there's nothing more stressful for a woman than to be left holding the baby."

"Do you condone what Granny did?" There was a wary look in her eyes.

"Not at all. I suppose I'm trying to understand it. Most children in your mother's position suffer constant verbal abuse, and that is often as damaging as the physical abuse, simply because the scars don't show and nobody outside the family knows about it." She shrugged. "But the results are the same. The child is just as repressed and just as flawed. Few personalities can survive the constant battering of criticism from a person they depend on. You either crawl or fight. There's no middle way."

Ruth looked angry. "My mother had both, verbal and physical. You've no idea how vicious my grandmother was to her."

"I'm sorry," said Sarah helplessly. "But if it's true that Mathilda was also punished brutally as a child, then she was as much a victim as your mother. But I don't suppose that's any consolation to you."

Ruth lit another cigarette. "Oh, don't get me wrong," she said with an ironic twist to her mouth, "I loved my grandmother. At least she had some character. My mother has none. Sometimes I hate her. Most of the time I just despise her." She frowned at the floor, stirring the dust with the toe of one shoe. "I think she killed Granny and I don't know what to do about it. Half of me blames her and the other half doesn't."

Sarah let the remark hang in the air for a moment while she cast around for something to say. What sort of accusation was this? A genuine accusation of murder? Or a spiteful sideswipe by a spoilt child against a parent she disliked? "The police are convinced it was suicide, Ruth. They've closed the case. As I understand it, there's no question of anyone else being involved in your grandmother's death."

"I don't mean Mum actually did it," she said, "you know, took the knife and did it. I mean that she drove Granny to killing herself. That's just as bad." She raised suspiciously bright eyes. "Don't you think so, Doctor?"

"Perhaps. If such a thing is possible. But from what you've told me of your mother's relationship with Mathilda, it sounds unlikely. It would be more plausible if it had happened the other way round and Mathilda had driven your mother to suicide." She smiled apologetically. "Even then, that sort of thing doesn't happen very often, and there would be a history of mental instability behind the person who saw suicide as their only escape from a difficult relationship."

But Ruth wasn't to be persuaded so easily. "You don't understand," she said. "They could be as unpleasant as they liked to each other and it didn't matter a damn. Mum was just as bad as Granny, but in a different way. Granny said what she thought while Mum just went on chipping away with snide little remarks. I hated being with them when they were together." Her lips thinned unattractively. "That was the only good thing about being sent to boarding school. Mum moved out then and went to London, and I could choose whether to come here for my holidays or go to Mum's. I didn't have to be a football any more."

How little Sarah knew about these three women. Where was Mr. Lascelles, for example? Had he, like James Gillespie, run away? Or was Lascelles some kind of courtesy title that Joanna had adopted to give her daughter legitimacy? "How long did you and your mother live here, then, before you went away to school?"

"From when I was a baby to when I was eleven. My father died and left us without a bean. Mum had to come crawling home or we'd have starved. That's her story at least. But personally I think she was just too snobbish and too lazy to take a menial job. She preferred Granny's insults to getting her hands dirty." She wrapped her arms about her waist and leaned forward, rocking herself. "My father was a Jew." She spoke the word with contempt.

Sarah was taken aback. "Why do you say it like that?"

"It's how my grandmother always referred to him. That Jew. She was an anti-Semite. Didn't you know?"

Sarah shook her head.

"Then you didn't know her very well." Ruth sighed. "He was a professional musician, a bass guitarist, attached to one of the studios. He did the backing tracks when the groups weren't good enough to do them themselves, and he had a band of his own which did gigs occasionally. He died of a heroin overdose in 1978. I don't remember him at all, but Granny took great delight in telling me what a worthless person he was. His name was Steven, Steven Lascelles." She lapsed into silence.

"How did your mother meet him?"

"At a party in London. She was supposed to get off with a deb's delight but got off with the guitarist instead. Granny didn't know anything about it until Mum told her she was pregnant, and then the shit hit the fan. I mean, can you imagine it? Mum up the spout by a Jewish rock guitarist with a heroin habit." She gave a hollow laugh. "It was a hell of a revenge." Her arms were turning blue with cold but she didn't seem to notice it. "So, anyway, they got married and she moved in with him. They had me and then six months later he was dead after spending all their money on heroin. He hadn't paid the rent for months. Mum was a widow-before she was twenty-three-on the dole with a baby and no roof over her head."

"Then coming back here was probably her only option."

Ruth pulled a sour face. "You wouldn't have done it though, not if you knew you'd never be allowed to forget your mistake."

Probably not, thought Sarah. She wondered if Joanna had loved Steven Lascelles or if, as Ruth had implied, she had taken up with him simply to spite Mathilda. "It's easy to be wise after the event," was all she said.

The girl went on as if she hadn't heard. "Granny tried to change my name to something more WASP-you know, White Anglo-Saxon Protestant-to erase the Hebrew in me. She called me Elizabeth for a while but Mum threatened to take me away, so Granny gave in. Other than that and her refusal to let Granny put the bridle on me when I cried, Mum let Granny dictate terms on everything." Her eyes flashed scornfully. "She was so wet. But it was easy to stand up to my grandmother. I did it all the time and we got on like a house on fire."

Sarah had no desire to be drawn into a domestic squabble between a mother and daughter she barely knew. She watched the long shadow creep across the lawn again as the sun emerged from behind a cloud. "Why did you ask me to come here, Ruth?"

"I don't know what to do. I thought you'd tell me."

Sarah studied the thin, rather malicious face and wondered if Joanna had any idea how much her daughter disliked her. "Don't do anything. Frankly, I can't imagine what your mother could have said or done that would have driven Mathilda to kill herself and, even if there were something, it would hardly be a chargeable offence."

"Then it should be," said Ruth harshly. "She found a letter in the house last time she was down here. She told Granny she'd publish it if Granny didn't change her will immediately and move out of the house. So Granny killed herself. She's left everything to me, you see. She wanted to leave everything to me." Now there was definite malice in the immature features.

Oh God, thought Sarah. What were you trying to tell me, Mathilda? "Have you seen this letter?"

"No, but Granny wrote and told me what was in it. She said she didn't want me to find out from my mother. So, you see, Mum did drive her to it. Granny would have done anything to avoid having her dirty linen washed in public." Her voice grated.

"Do you still have the letter she wrote to you?"

Ruth scowled. "I tore it up. But that one wasn't important, it's the one Mum found that's important. She'll use it to try and overturn Granny's will."

"Then I think you should find yourself a solicitor," said Sarah firmly, drawing her legs together under her chair preparatory to getting up. "I was your grandmother's doctor, that's all. I can't get involved between you and your mother, Ruth, and I'm quite sure Mathilda wouldn't have wanted me to."

"But she would," the girl cried. "She said in her letter that if anything happened to her I was to talk to you. She said you would know what to do for the best."

"Surely not? Your grandmother didn't confide in me. All I know about your family is what you've told me today."

A thin hand reached out and gripped hers. It was icy cold. "The letter was from Granny's uncle, Gerald Cavendish, to his solicitor. It was a will, saying he wanted everything he had to go to his daughter."

Sarah could feel the hand on hers trembling, but whether from cold or nerves she didn't know. "Go on," she prompted.

"This house and all the money was his. He was the elder brother."

Sarah frowned again. "So what are you saying? That Mathilda never had any rights to it? Well, I'm sorry, Ruth, but this is way beyond me. You really must find a solicitor and talk it through with him. I haven't a clue what your legal position is, truly I haven't." Her subconscious caught up with her. "Still, it's very odd, isn't it? If his daughter was his heir, shouldn't she have inherited automatically?"

"No one knew she was his daughter," said Ruth bleakly, "except Granny, and she told everyone James Gillespie was the father. It's my mother, Dr. Blakeney. Granny was being fucked by her uncle. It's really sick, isn't it?"