Some Deaths Before Dying

DILYS

1

Deliberately Dilys took her time about putting the album away, phoning the secretary for Mr. Stadding’s number and setting up the extension speaker. It wasn’t going to be much of a rest anyway, but she would make it as long as she could. She felt anxious. There was nothing to show for it on the chart, temperature and pulse normal, bowels a bit slow, appetite down a little, but over the past few days she had sensed more and more strongly that Mrs. Matson’s illness was moving towards a crisis, not drifting towards it, either, as is the case with most really old people as they are eased into their deaths, but being sucked towards it by a strengthening inner current. And night after night Mrs. Matson hadn’t been sleeping properly. She was thinking too hard, remembering too fiercely, and all the while digging into herself for any little scraps that might be left there to feed her thinking and remembering.

The doctor was coming this afternoon for a checkup, but Dilys didn’t intend to tell him any of this, not unless he asked her directly, and perhaps not even then. She knew what he’d do, he’d prescribe a sedative to calm Mrs. Matson down into a nice peaceful departure. That wasn’t right. Mrs. Matson wanted to think. It was really important. It was the only thing left.

But if she didn’t let herself rest a bit when she got the chance, she’d be gone too soon to find the answer. That must’ve been a nasty moment for her just now, when she’d tried to say something and found she couldn’t. Frightening.

Having spun things out as much as she could, Dilys made the call. A woman’s voice answered, light, anxious, hesitating over the number she gave.

“Is Mr. Stadding there, please?”

“I’ll just go and see…Who shall I say?”

“My name’s Dilys Roberts. I’m speaking for Mrs. Matson, because she can’t use the phone.”

“I don’t understand. Which of you wants to talk to my husband?”

Dilys explained again.

“It’s about the Cambi Road Association,” she added.“Oh, dear…well, I’ll see.”

There was a long pause. Dilys waited, puzzled. This Mr. Stadding was Major Stadding’s son, wasn’t he, the one in the photographs. He oughtn’t to have been much more than Mrs. Thomas’s age, but his wife sounded quite a bit older than that, nervy too, used to being looked after, finding even the taking of a telephone message bothersome.

There was the click of another extension and the voice returned, more anxious than ever.

“I’m so sorry, but my husband can’t come now. He’s not been well, especially these last few days. He says if you could write. Do you have the address?”

“Yes, but…you see, we were hoping Mr. Stadding might come and see Mrs. Matson…”

“Oh, there’s no question of that. I told you he wasn’t at all well. No, you’ll have to write.”

Dilys looked towards the bed. The lips moved briefly, shaping a syllable—inaudible, but Dilys could perceive the weary acceptance. She thanked Mrs. Stadding and rang off. She stood for a little, staring blankly at the handset, still in her hand, while she put her thoughts in order, then turned to the bed.

“Now don’t try and say anything for the moment, dearie—you’re just wearing yourself out, and it won’t get you anywhere doing that. You’re going to have a proper rest now, and I’m going to put your book on and you’re going to listen to it for a whole side, and then we’ll see. And while you’re doing that I’m going to write a letter to Mr. Stadding, so you know something’s happening and you don’t just lie there fretting to get on. Only first we’ve got to get right what you want me to say. No, don’t try and say anything, not yet. You want to ask him something, and it’s about his father, isn’t it? Trouble is, it’s a secret, and he’s not going to tell just anyone. It’s got to be you, just between the two of you—that’s why you hoped he could come and see you. So it’s no use you telling me this question, because it’s a secret, like I say, and how’s he to know I’m telling the truth anyway, about it all being for you, and I’m not going to read what he says when he writes back to you? That’s really the first thing we’ve got to work out. I mean, if he’s sure it’s you and you can tell him somehow he can rely on me—which he can, if only he knew—and then, somehow, we can get your question to him, do you follow…?”

She paused, not expecting any answer, because that was as far as her thoughts had reached. She saw Mrs. Matson’s lips move, again inaudibly.

“I’m afraid I didn’t catch that, dearie—you’ll have to say it again.”

She bent over the bed to hear the faint syllable.

“Tape.”

“Tape…? Oh, a tape recorder! That’s brilliant! Yes, I can hold the microphone right up close and I’ll put my Walkman on so I can’t hear what you’re saying and I can tell him all that in the letter and he can put his answer on the tape and send it back for you to listen to. You are a clever old thing, you really are!…Not like that? But…All right, you tell me!”

Again she bent and strained to hear the fought-for syllables, separated each from the next like drips from a tap.

“Write. First. Me. Dead. Soon. Must. Know. Before. Album. Family. Fifty. Seven…”

There was a longer pause. Dilys waited, realising that Mrs. Matson was momentarily exhausted and only giving herself time to gather strength again. She wouldn’t be at ease, not to rest properly, until she’d finished the message.

“Man. On. Fire. Escape. Send. Say. ‘Carrot.’ Joke.#8221;

“Joke…Oh, I get it! There was a joke about a carrot, and he’ll remember, so he’ll know it’s got to be you. That’s brilliant! And we can send it to him and ask him to help while we’re getting the tape ready…You don’t think we might as well wait. Ellen’s got a recorder sure as eggs. You’ve just got to have a decent rest, not fretting about it all, and you’ll find you’re talking normal again. And I’ll get that letter written while you’re resting, and see Ellen and get it all set up ready, so you can do the tape this afternoon and we’ll get it all in the late post. Don’t you think that’s best? Really?”

“No. Send. Letter. Photo. Graph. You. Take. Tape.”

“Me? Well, if that’s the way you want it. Just as you like, dearie. Now is that everything? It better had be, ’cause this isn’t doing you any good. Best have it off your chest, I know, but it’s no use trying yourself beyond what you can manage…”

She paused as Mrs. Matson smiled. She had the most beautiful smile, Dilys thought. They were often like that, old people’s smiles, holy, sort of, but naughty with it sometimes…

“Letter. Lay it. On. Thick. Dilys.”

“Do my best, dearie, you can be sure of that. And it’ll take me a bit of a while, seeing I’m not much of a writer, so I’m going to make you nice and comfortable, and draw your curtains this end and you’re going to have your rest. And I’ll settle down at the table there so I can keep an eye on you, make sure you’re behaving yourself. I’ll just nip out and get that photo first, shall I, so you know I’ve got the right one.”

The photograph was where Mrs. Matson had said it would be, of course. It was of a very handsome young man. Dilys had noticed a couple of pictures of him earlier in the album as she’d leafed through, one of them with Miss Anne down by the river, feeding ducks. Here he was alone on a sort of balcony…no, it was the fire escape, of course, like Mrs. Matson had said, only the way he was standing was so poetical you couldn’t help thinking balcony…you could see he was sending himself up, standing like that, so it was funny already, and then…something to do with a carrot—he’d got one and put it between his teeth, like a rose? Something like that. And Mr. Stadding had been there…No, of course, the young man was Mr. Stadding, so of course he’d remember…

She showed the picture to Mrs. Matson, settled her down for her rest, fetched her own writing things and got down to the letter.

It took her almost all morning, with several false starts and endless crossings out. Lay it on thick, Mrs. Matson had said, but she didn’t want it to sound soppy or pathetic because Mrs. Matson wasn’t like that. She found that the plainer she made it, the more she called a spade a spade, the righter it felt, so in the end it came out a good deal shorter than her first attempts.

Dear Mr. Stadding,

I’m writing to you for Mrs. Matson. She can’t write because she’s paralysed and she can only just speak so the phone’s no use either. She’s told me to send this picture along with the letter, so you can know it’s from her. She says to tell you “Carrot.”

The other thing she said to tell you is she hasn’t got long. Motor neurone disease is what she has, and once you’ve got it you just get worse, starting with your legs and working up. Mrs. Matson’s almost gone. I don’t know how long it will be, she’s such a fighter, but I doubt she’ll see another winter.

The thing I want to tell you for myself is she’s absolutely all there still, in her mind, I mean. She never stops thinking and remembering and working things out. So it’s no use trying to fob her off. She’ll see what you’re at, and she won’t give up. She’ll try and get at it another way.

Now, there’s just something she’s anxious to get sorted before she goes. She hasn’t told me what it is and I’m not asking, because it’s private, but it’s got to be something to do with the Cambi Road Association, or she wouldn’t be asking you. And I can tell you from me she’s not going to go happy without it—she’s got herself into such a state fretting about it. She’s killing herself, if you want my honest opinion. That’s no way to go, Mr. Stadding. It isn’t right.

Anyway, she wants to keep it private and so do you, she says, so her idea is I’m going to fix a tape recorder by her so she can whisper into it, which is as much as she can do by way of talking, anyway. And I’ll stop my ears so I don’t hear anything, and she wants me to bring the tape over for you to listen to, and then you can talk to her back the same way. So you’ll know it’s only me that had the chance to know anything about it, and you can make up your mind about me when you see me, I suppose.

Saturday’s my day off, if that suits you, but we can get the other nurse in different days if you’d sooner. And there’s a phone up here, so if you ring the number at the top and ask for the nursery wing, they’ll put you through.

Yours truly,

Dilys Roberts (Miss)

Mrs. Matson had actually slept, and when she woke her voice, though feeble, was more under her control. A little reluctantly Dilys read her the letter, but she didn’t seem at all put out by its frankness and smiled and said, “Well done,” so Dilys parcelled it up with the photograph and put it on the table in the hall to go with the afternoon post. Two morning later Mrs. Stadding telephoned, obviously reluctant, to say that her husband could see Dilys the following Saturday morning. Dilys, with Ellen’s help, had already looked up trains and found that though Market Drayton was only sixty miles away there wasn’t anything that got there without taking all day and going all round the shop; and the buses were just as bad. So Mrs. Matson asked Mrs. Thomas if Trevor Sweeting couldn’t take her. He was really the under-gardener, but mostly he did odd jobs and stuff, and anyway Saturdays were supposed to be his days off too, but Mrs. Thomas must have got him in a good mood—she had a real trick for that, Dilys had found; everyone seemed to eat out of her hand because it never crossed her mind they wouldn’t—so in the end it all worked out.

2

The sixty miles took almost two hours along busy winding roads. Trevor listened to Radio One turned up loud. Dilys sat in the back letting time drift past in a kind of half dream. Looking at all those photos with Mrs. Matson, it must have been, but she found herself supposing she’d spent her life taking pictures of everything that had ever happened around her, so she’d shelves and shelves of albums of her own she could use to fish stuff out of the long ago, the way Mrs. Matson did. Nursing college, say, back at Tredegar. There’d’ve been an album for that. Who’d have been in it? Di Phillips, for a start, bleached blond hair, pouty lips, always messing around with her uniform to get it a bit tighter where it showed—as if she needed it—and waggling her bum at the senior consultant—a good nurse, mind you, and there’d been a dozen young doctors she could’ve taken her pick of, instead of which she’d gone and got involved with one of the night porters, old enough to be her father almost, and married him and stuck with him and had three kids, and he’d carried on being just a night porter but she’d gone back into nursing and done very well, heading for matron last Dilys had heard…heard how? Somebody must’ve told her, and the rest, different times, because Di was the sort you talked about…but if she didn’t know how she knew, how did she know she knew…? And what about that other girl—she was a darling and there weren’t that many black nurses back then—but Dilys couldn’t remember a thing about her, not her name, nothing she’d said or done, leave alone what happened to her after, only the glossy skin and the big laughing mouth and the sideways glancing eyes, yes, just like one of Mrs. Matson’s photos. Bonnie Wincing now—it was the other way with her because there’d been a photo to go on, the one in the newspapers and it had to be her because there couldn’t be two people called that. Dilys didn’t remember much about her from Tredegar, except the name, but now the papers said she’d given a patient ten times the drug he was supposed to be on and faked a card to make it look like the doctor prescribed it, so she’d be in real trouble when the patient died, which he did. The doctor was a woman, that was the point, and she’d been having it off with another doctor who Bonnie fancied. Looking at the photos in the papers, Dilys wouldn’t’ve known she’d ever seen the face before…It was all gone, gone, except scraps, and most of your life is like that, really, if you thought about it, even when you think there’s lots and lots you remember. Maybe there were people who had it all sorted and stored away in their minds, like Mrs. Matson had with her albums, but most of us aren’t like that…

The car slowed right down. Trevor read the name on a gate.

“Looks like we’re here,” he shouted over the radio. “Fanning, wasn’t it? How long are you going to be, then?”

“I don’t know. Not very long. Half an hour?”

“Oh, that’s not so bad. I’ll put the car on the verge there and stretch my legs a bit. OK?”

The house must have been two small cottages once, because half of it had a slate roof and the other half was thatched, and the windows didn’t line up—one of them you could see where the other front door had been. There was a tidy plain garden. When Dilys was halfway up the flagged path from the gate, the door was opened by a small, stooped woman, neatly dressed in a wool-knit skirt and twinset. Well into her seventies. Heart condition. Osteoporosis. Might last for years, might go this afternoon, poor thing. Her voice was the twitter Dilys had heard on the telephone.

“You’re Miss Roberts? How do you do? I’m Ida Stadding. My husband’s expecting you. Please—I don’t know what this is about—he won’t tell me but I know he’s upset about it, and that isn’t good for him. He gets so tired.”

“That’s all right, Mrs. Stadding,” said Dilys, on her home ground and armed with her professional confidence. “I don’t know that much about it myself, but I don’t think it’ll take long, and if you want to know my guess is it’s something he’ll be happy to have off his chest. And I’m a nurse, remember, so I’ll know if I’m taxing him, and I’ll be careful.”

“All right, then. This way…”

The house inside was nothing special to Dilys’s eye, but it had that pleasant feel you get when a couple have lived companionably together for many years. Most of the pictures were of birds. Mrs. Stadding opened a door, and a wave of warmth flooded into the hallway. The room was hotter than the greenhouse at Forde Place where Mr. Worple brought the houseplants on. Despite that, the man in the chair had a rug across his lap, a shawl round his shoulders and wore a knitted scarf and mittens. His skin was a dirty yellow, his eyes sunk and his flesh fallen away, but Dilys could still see that she’d been right in her guess, and he’d been the beautiful young man Mrs. Matson had photographed on the fire escape. Liver, obviously. Should’ve been in hospital, poor man, but by the looks of him it was a bit late even for that.

He acknowledged their entry with a sour little smile.

“I won’t get up, if you’ll forgive me,” he said. “As you see, I am not in very good health.”

“Now do be careful, Sim, and not upset yourself,” said Mrs. Stadding. “I’ll run and put a kettle on for Miss Roberts. Tea or coffee?”

“Don’t make it special for me, Mrs. Stadding. Only if you’re having some. Tea and milk and one sugar, which I know I oughtn’t.”

“Count yourself fortunate to be able to make the choice,” said Mr. Stadding.

He waited for the door to close.

“Now, what have you got for me?”

Dilys fished in her bag.

“There’s the tape recorder,” she said. “Put it on your table, shall I, where you can reach it? And I’ll plug the microphone in. There’s fresh batteries, so you won’t need a cord. All you’ve got to do is—”

“I am familiar with these devices.”

“That’s all right then. But you’re going to have to listen real hard, because her voice is starting to go and she can’t talk above a whisper, just two or three words at a time. I was in the room with her to press the buttons for her and that, but I was wearing my Walkman which I’ve got for sitting up with my patients so I don’t disturb them, so I didn’t hear anything she said, I promise you that. Now I’ll just go outside…”

“Go and talk to my wife, if you like. I daresay she could do with a chat. I am not much by way of company these days. I must trust you not to tell her the reason for your visit.”

“Of course I shan’t. That’s between you and Mrs. Matson.”

Surprised by the sudden affront, she had spoken sharply, but he merely nodded and waited for her to leave.

From the hallway she could see Mrs. Stadding in the kitchen, standing by a counter, motionless. She was holding a tea bag by one corner between fingertip and thumb tip, as if posing for a photo in an ad. The whistle of the kettle broke her trance. She dropped the tea bag into the cup and moved out of sight. When she came back with the kettle Dilys saw that, as she’d guessed, she was crying.

She waited until the kettle was safely back on the cooker and went in. Mrs. Stadding made no effort to stop her tears.

“Oh, you poor thing,” said Dilys.

“I can’t bear it. I can’t bear it any more.”

“It’s his liver, isn’t it?”

“That’s right. We knew it was bad, and we’d been waiting for a transplant, but suddenly it’s got so much worse and he’s too ill for it and they want to take him to hospital but he’s made up his mind he’s dying and he wants to die here. I can’t bear it. He’s so much younger than I am, so we’d always known I’d go first.”

“Oh, that’s so hard on you! Of course it is! Why, you’ve only made one cup.”

“I don’t want anything.”

“I’m sure you do. Come along now. Tea or coffee?”

“Tea, I suppose.”

“There’s a good girl. Now you tell me all about it and don’t worry what you’re saying because a secret’s a secret and I’ll not pass it on. I never think any the worse of someone for what they say when they’re in trouble. Far better have it out, I always say, than bottle it up. Now, then, not too strong, I expect.”

“Oh no, terribly weak. And a teeny bit of milk—I’m not supposed to but I can’t stand it without.”

“Me too. Now you sit there and tell me about it. No wonder you’re fond of him. He must have been ever so handsome when he was a young man.”

“Oh, you should have seen him! From the moment I set eyes on him I knew there was no one else in the world I wanted. I hadn’t a hope, you’d have said, with me being so much older than he was though I wasn’t a bad looker still, if I say it myself, but I wasn’t one to give up. I found out he was keen on bird-watching, so I got myself a book and some binoculars and…”

Still weeping gently she glanced at Dilys and smiled, and Dilys saw for a moment what a lively little woman she must once have been.

“I’ve never fancied it myself,” she said. “Too much hanging around and getting chilled through for me.”

“Oh, no, you can get quite cosy in a hide, you know, waiting for something to happen. I never expected him to love me the way I adored him. There’d been just this one girl he’d loved like that, ever, and ever would, but it had gone wrong, and now he was tired of living alone and at least I’d amuse him and make him comfortable.”

“Looks like you did, too,” said Dilys. “It’s got a nice homey something about it, this house. I felt it the moment I came in.”

“Oh, yes, hasn’t it? And I’ve worked so hard for that, and so has he. He didn’t used to be like this, you know—it’s just his illness. It’s eating him up. He keeps saying he’s got bad blood—well of course he has, now, but it’s as if he’s always had it and it’s his own fault for being born like that, and now he’s being punished for it, and he can’t think about anything else. He was always so thoughtful too…and we’ve had wonderful holidays together…and been so…comfortable…and it’s not going to be like that any more…never any more…”

She had stopped crying and now sat staring, grey-faced, at something that wasn’t there between her and the Aga.

“You know what’s killed him?” she said, biting the words out. “It’s the Cambi Road Association, that’s what. And that’s what you’ve come about too now. I didn’t want him to see you, you know.”

“I’m sorry,” said Dilys. “I’m only a messenger, sort of, bringing him something. I don’t know much about it myself.”

“But you wrote, didn’t you? The postmark said Matlock. It must have been a photograph of something, but he’d hidden it when I came back. And he was upset—in a funny kind of way, though…you aren’t going to tell me, are you? It’s another of their stupid secrets…”

In a sense the situation was familiar to Dilys, familiar enough to know what she felt and what she should do. It happened again and again, younger relatives concealing stuff from her patients on the pretext of saving the old and helpless from unnecessary fret, though in reality, as often as not, doing it to avoid having to cope with what might be a perfectly justifiable fuss. It put her in a false position, and she resented it. Regardless of who was paying the fees her primary loyalty was to her patient, and she disliked being forced to go along with these deceits, as in most cases she was, because now if she told the truth the patient would suffer not only the original fret but also the greater hurt of betrayal. Mrs. Stadding wasn’t her patient really, but…

“I’ll tell you what was in the letter, if you like,” she said. “I don’t think Mrs. Matson would mind, because she did it that way in case it got opened by somebody else. It was just so Mr. Stadding could know it was Mrs. Matson who sent me. It was a photo she took of him, years ago at Forde Place, on the fire escape, looking all romantic. And she said to tell him ‘Carrot,’ because it was some sort of joke had happened, and he’d remember and know it must be from her in spite of me writing it. And I was going to bring him a tape with a message on it, and he could send a message back the same way. It was to keep it all secret, you know.”

“Don’t I just!” sighed Mrs. Stadding. “It’s always secrets, and they’re killing him. I knew he shouldn’t have let you come.”

“If you want my opinion, it might help this time,” said Dilys. “It might be a chance to get something off his chest after all these years.”

“Oh, if only he’d do that! If only he’d tell me! I can’t ask—I just can’t. It’s the same with his brothers. There’s two of them, and years and years ago us three wives—because they’re both married—we got together—we didn’t see that much of each other, not usually—but that time we were on our own and we settled down and thrashed out everything we’d picked up, one way or another…Do you mind? It’s just that I’ve had it buzzing around in my head all these years…”

“Well, I don’t know,” said Dilys. “In the ordinary way of things I’d say you tell me if you want and I won’t pass it on. But this time…I’m here for Mrs. Matson. She’s not got long to live now and there’s something she’s desperate to know before she goes, and she’s hoping Mr. Stadding will tell her. And it’s all to do, far as I can see, with the same sort of secrets, so suppose you went and told me stuff Mrs. Matson might want to know, I’m not going to pretend I wouldn’t tell her.”

Mrs. Stadding was gazing again at the ghost behind Dilys’s shoulder. Dilys wasn’t at all sure she’d heard or understood, but she smiled stonily.

“Then we’re both in the same boat, I suppose. I’m desperate to know before Sim goes. I’ve got nothing against Mrs. Matson—not that I’ve ever met her—Sim didn’t want me coming to Forde Place…Oh, you tell her what you like, Miss Roberts…If it hadn’t been for Colonel Matson I’d never have had my life with Sim, anyway…

“There was this girl I told you about you see, the one Sim loved. She was Colonel Matson’s daughter, and they were all great friends, the Staddings and the Matsons, and Sim and the girl were going to get married, and everyone was very happy about it. But then there was some kind of row between Colonel Matson and Sim’s father—I don’t know what it was about, but it must have been something Sim’s father had done because he walked out. Went abroad somewhere, I mean, and never came back, and took a lot of his wife’s money with him too. Leila, her name was—she was my mother-in-law, of course, and Sim used to take me to visit her in Torbay sometimes, where he and the other two had bought a little house for her. She was a sad old thing, and she’d been such a beauty once—that’s where Sim got his looks, of course—and there were all these photographs all round the room with bits cut out of them. And it wasn’t Sim’s father, if that’s what you’re thinking. There were lots of him, so I know what he looked like, though I never met him. No, it was the Matsons. Any of her photographs had one of them in it, she snipped carefully all round them and put it back in the frame, because she didn’t want to let anyone forget that everything that had gone wrong, it was all Colonel Matson’s fault.

“Of course I asked Sim about it, soon as we were in the car to come home—it was a terrible drive those days, before the motor-ways—and all he said was, ‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you. I would if I could, but I can’t. It’s something she’s done in the last few months, they weren’t like that last time I came. And please don’t ask me again.’ I could tell from the way he said it he was very upset.

“Of course I guessed it was something he’d promised his mother, not to talk about the Matsons, though it didn’t stop him going over to Forde Place for the Cambi Road reunions.

“Anyway he’d been in love with this girl, Anne her name was, and they were going to get married. I found some of the wedding invitations at the back of a drawer once, so they’d got that far, and it would have been a big, smart wedding, but their two stupid fathers had this row and it was all broken off. I don’t know what it was about. One of us three wives said Sim’s father had run off with a woman Colonel Matson had introduced him to, but the other one said no, it was because he’d stolen a lot of money belonging to Colonel Matson, and Colonel Matson had come and told Sim that he didn’t want him for his son-in-law any longer. Sim absolutely worshipped Colonel Matson, I should have told you, so I thought that made a bit better sense than the other story, but it still wasn’t like my Sim, not if he loved the girl the way I’m sure he did. You can see about cancelling the fancy wedding, I suppose, but what was to stop them waiting a little while and them marrying each other quietly, and bother their parents if they were against it, they were both old enough? And anyway, he was honour bound to marry her, wasn’t he, like he was honour bound to the Cambi Road Association, and he wouldn’t give it up, whatever I said.

“His father used to be secretary, you see, and Colonel Matson was the boss. And then his father ran off, and somebody else took over, but he got ill and Colonel Matson died, so they were in trouble until Sim went to them and said he’d do the job. I don’t know how he put it to them, I expect they were a bit surprised but of course they jumped at the chance. Only whatever he said his real reason was he knew he’d made a terrible mistake and he wanted to keep in touch with the Matsons, just hoping he might pick up with the girl again. I expect he’d written to her before, and she hadn’t answered or she’d given him the brush-off, but he wasn’t going to give up. He’s like that.

“Of course that was all before I met him—”

An electric bell rang briefly, twice, from the hall.

“That’ll be for you,” said Mrs. Stadding, rising. “And thank you for listening to a stupid old woman worrying away at what can’t be helped.”

“You mustn’t think that bad of yourself,” said Dilys. “You’re being brave about it, you really are. I’ve seen some make far more fuss when they hadn’t got half what you’ve got to put up with.”

“Only it’s so hard to keep going.”

“Of course it is.”

“And I’ll tell you what’s the worst of it—it’s thinking he should never have let any of it happen in the first place, and he knows it and I know it. Oh, why couldn’t he tell those stupid old men that their silly quarrel wasn’t any of his business, and just gone ahead and married the girl, if he was that fond of her?”

As she started to weep the bell rang again, longer and more insistently. Mr. Stadding could hear their voices, Dilys guessed. She took Mrs. Stadding by the shoulders and eased her back into her chair.

“Now, you sit there and drink your tea,” she said. “I haven’t finished mine so I’ll be back in a minute for the rest of it, and we can talk some more if you want.”

She left her dutifully sipping as she wept.

Mr. Stadding was sitting with his head bowed and his eyes shut. The recorder was in his lap with the case closed and the microphone unplugged and coiled. After a few seconds he looked up, slowly, as if just raising his eyelids was almost too taxing.

“I trust you have had a pleasant gossip,” he said. “Well, I have recorded an answer of a sort for Mrs. Matson. I hope it will satisfy her. Will you make her understand that I have done even this with considerable reluctance, and shall not respond to any further enquiries. I suppose I must thank you for coming. Goodbye.”

Dilys tucked the recorder and microphone into her bag. She was all too used to the way the old and ill can exploit their weakness to control others. She spoke to Mr. Stadding as if he had been one of her patients, not letting her anger show, using a quiet, professional tone, as if she’d been advising him on the management of his illness.

“I’ve got something to say to you before I go, Mr. Stadding. You’ll think it’s no business of mine, but I’ve been talking to your wife, like you said to. She’s having a very rough time, poor thing…No, you listen to me, and of course you’re wishing it wasn’t so but there’s nothing you can do about it. Well there is. She’s got ideas into her head about the whys and wherefores of stuff that’s happened—this stuff I came to see you about, not that I know much about it myself, but I know enough to see that some of her imaginings are mistaken. No, wait. Far as I can gather, you’ve never told her, not because you didn’t want to, but because you gave someone your word about it, once. Well, that’s all over. It’s years and years ago. Colonel Matson’s dead and Mrs. Matson won’t be long going and there isn’t anyone else that matters, except Mrs. Stadding. You think it’s not got anything to do with her, but it has. More than anyone else it has, now. You don’t want to leave her thinking worse of you than she need do, do you? So you go ahead and tell her everything you can. You’re a decent man, and you’ve been trying to do the decent thing all these years to a lot of people who don’t matter any more. It’s her turn now. She’s the one who matters. Don’t leave it lying between you the way it is now, and you’ll both feel better for it, really you will.”

His answer was toneless with weariness.

“As you say, it is none of your business, Miss Roberts. Nevertheless I will think about it.”

“You do that. And show her the photograph Mrs. Matson took of you, and talk to her about Miss Anne. It won’t upset her, nothing like the way she’s upset now.”

“Goodbye, Miss Roberts.”

Mrs. Stadding was still in the kitchen, but she had finished her tea and cleaned away the traces of her tears.

“I made you another cup,” she said. “Yours looked cold and horrid.”

The bell rang, a single, longer burst.

“That’s for me to go and give him a hand with…you know. He can’t manage on his own any more. I’m afraid it takes a while, but please stay as long as you want and let yourself out if you’ve got to go.”

“I’ll just have my tea and then I’ll be off, thank you. I told the driver half an hour, and it’s past that already.”

“In that case…well, goodbye, Miss Roberts.”

“Goodbye, Mrs. Stadding. And I do hope things go better for you soon.”

“Oh, dear.”