The Widow's Confession (34 page)

It was past five o’clock when Delphine saw Julia’s fair head bent towards Mr Steele’s, and she knew her cousin was speaking to her beau with some urgency.
Sure enough, Edmund came to Delphine.

‘She wishes to go home to the cottage,’ he said. ‘She is insistent. Will you go with her? She does not wish for me.’

‘No,’ said Delphine. Though she had longed to go home, she knew that to be alone with Julia would be unbearable.

He returned; she heard Julia’s soft voice raised anxiously, telling Edmund she wished to be alone. Felt Mr Benedict’s eyes on her as she went to the front and held on to the metal
railing which prevented her from falling into the harbour. Edmund spoke to the driver, asking him to return once he had taken Julia home.

The gaiety of the day had deepened. Some of the merrymakers were drunk; others tired. Squalling children were carried away to sleep off the heat and excitement. But as the daylight filtered from
the sky and it darkened into night, there was a growing sense of expectation at the idea of fireworks.

‘Papa,’ said Daisy, ‘please let me stay with you.’

She twined her hands into Mr Benedict’s coat, giving the strong impression that she would hold onto her father and not let go, not at all, until he gave way to her. She insisted that she
was grown up and that, this evening, everyone should call her Marguerite, her given name. She was no longer Daisy, she said.

Mrs Benedict, the children and their governess were all preparing to go; the children were tired and over-excited. Mr Benedict, of course, had to see the fireworks. He used the painter’s
prerogative, brushed his breast-pocket with his hand to indicate that he would be taking drawings with his pencil and sketchbook. His wife smiled faintly, indulgently.

‘Please, Papa,’ said Daisy again. ‘I will be a good girl.’

It was clear that Mr Benedict’s resistance was melting away; as with a pretty serving girl, so with his daughters, thought Delphine, the strength of her irritation surprising her. So it
was that Mrs Benedict and her little troupe went off into the dusk, without a glance behind her. How strange it was to see Mr Benedict, who had often bemoaned the burden of family, watching his
wife go, keeping his eyes on her until she was out of sight.

They moved through the crowds to find the best vantage point. The fireworks were to be set off from the
Little Western
in the harbour, and there was a rising sense of anticipation all
along the front.

‘There are so many people,’ said Alba, sounding a little peevish. ‘Can we not find a place to sit?’ But of course Mr Benedict would have none of it; the right vantage
point had to be found, and he would keep looking until it was found, so they walked until the first rocket flamed into the sky and blistered the darkness with its explosion, and Miss Waring said
she would walk no longer.

Delphine looked at the sky at first, but she could find no pleasure in the sprays of light. She watched her fellow tourists, their faces lit up in the darkness by yellow then peach-coloured
light, and she saw in no one an unthinking delight, save Mr Benedict, who had lifted Daisy onto his shoulders, and Mrs Quillian. These three, in tandem, oohed and aaahed; Alba did the same, but
self-consciously, glancing now and then at Theo, who was feigning pleasure – a polite smile, as if he did not trust himself to let his face rest. Mr Steele enjoyed it too, but Delphine saw
that he was worrying about Julia. Poor Julia, she thought sourly, who had confessed her sins but had not shed her guilt – and she felt no desire to go home and to speak to her, now that
everything was changed.

Miss Waring was not enjoying it at all. ‘Such a crush,’ she said, after five minutes or so. ‘I must find a place to sit and rest. I must also have a drink – no, do not
bother yourself, Mr Hallam, I can see that you are relishing the spectacle. Mrs Quillian, will you come with me?’

Poor Mrs Quillian did not want to go, but she did. More light and sparkle flew through the air, more eruptions and cracks like gunfire. Daisy bounced and cheered, until her father lifted her
down, declaring himself tired.

‘You have been very quiet,’ he said to Delphine. ‘Are you well?’

‘Perfectly,’ she said. ‘I’ve just thought, this will be the last evening we all spend together. I am trying to observe, to remember.’

He looked at her quizzically, then became aware that Daisy was not tugging at his hand or his coat.

‘Daisy?’ he said. A firework exploded with a spray of light. He glanced, not panicking yet, at the people around him, then looked low, trying to make out his daughter’s golden
head.

‘Daisy? Where are you? Daisy!’

He began to push through the crowds, searching, his voice drowned out by the noise of the fireworks and the crowd’s reaction.

It was Delphine who told the others; Delphine who calmed the immediate worry in Benedict’s face, walking alongside him, looking too.

‘All will be well,’ she said, but she could see the sweat on his brow. ‘She is adventurous and wilful, but a good girl – she will find the muster point.’

‘Yes! The Clock House!’ he said. ‘We will go there. That is where she will be.’

There were rooms set up at the Clock House, for anyone who was taken unwell; and when they arrived Mr Benedict told one of the local women, who had been assisting there, what had happened.

‘She is this high,’ he said, ‘and she has long, very long golden hair, and she is dressed in green, with a high lace bow in her hair.’

‘I think I saw her,’ the woman said. ‘She was with a lady who said she needed to lie down.’

‘Where?’

She directed them to the room. As they walked down the hallway, they heard the delighted cries of the crowd as another firework exploded. Mr Benedict tried the door.

‘It is locked,’ he said. ‘Daisy? Daisy!’

‘It should not be locked,’ said the woman. ‘I will find the doctor.’

It was then that panic overtook Mr Benedict. There was no answer to the calls he made, and he began to bang on the door with his fist, then kick it. And when the woman returned and said they
could not find the key, he began in earnest, working at it with his shoulder, Mr Steele and Mr Hallam with him.

When they finally broke the door open, the room was silent. The sight that met their eyes was puzzling in its domesticity. The room was lit by a single oil-lamp, flickering behind its
cranberry-coloured glass shade. In the far left-hand corner of the tiny room, Daisy lay on a bed, her hair neatly combed around her face, her arms relaxed by her side. She was quite still; not the
struggling, vital little presence she had been earlier. She was watched by a woman who sat with her back to the door; it was obvious that she knew they were there, for their entrance had been
violent, but she did not turn. She was a familiar figure, dressed in a pale brown dress with tiny pink roses on it; tall, broad, her hands clasped in her lap, her hair drawn back neatly.

Delphine did not know how long they stood there; it seemed an eternity, but it must have been only seconds. She felt as if her mind was playing tricks on her, jumping around in this room of pink
shadows, her gaze dwelling on the flickering lashes of the sleeping child; then that familiar figure. It dwelled on, and circled the question of who this woman was, for what her eyes were telling
her could not be true.

It was Benedict, of course, who broke this daze that had fallen over them all. Benedict who stampeded forwards and pulled the woman round by her shoulder. And as the woman turned, Delphine saw,
as though every tiny movement lasted many seconds, that she was like a puppet in one of the seafront shows the children loved. The face, lit by the pink light, was working; the lips moving in some
grotesque incantation – not a prayer, she thought. Oh, God, not a prayer. Then the lips stopped moving and the woman stared hard into Benedict’s face, rage blazing in her eyes.

‘Do not touch me,’ said Miss Waring to Mr Benedict.

The familiar face was unfamiliar; the usual softness of feature, the air of gentility – all gone, replaced by hardness, and ugliness. Even the set of the mouth at rest was different; the
eyes cold, unknowable. Delphine knew, suddenly, that this was the natural face, the natural expression, of Miss Waring. She had seen hints of it, flashes of it, merely; in the moment when she had
spoken of painting with Mr Benedict; in the moment she had urged purity on her niece. Tiny flashes of the disgust that now worked the features, disgust so concentrated it was painful to look upon.
Even then, she thought, Why did I not see? I am a person who prides themselves on seeing everything, even secrets, even those things below the surface. As when the sand is blown over the beach,
laying a skin over it, the ghost of the real beach lies below, just visible, and the ghost outline of the real Miss Waring had been there all the time.

Benedict had passed her, had seized his daughter by the shoulders, raising her from the bed, saying her name repeatedly. Delphine was aware of Edmund turning and running into the next room,
calling for a doctor.

‘Oh, do not disturb her,’ said Miss Waring, and she gave a little tut below her breath. ‘It is too late. She has taken her medicine.’ She moved forwards to look at the
girl’s face over Benedict’s shoulder, and there was a strange kind of gentleness, even of love, in her eyes; not the social affection she had feigned on their trips and excursions for
her niece and the others, but something true and felt.

‘What have you done?’ roared Benedict. ‘What have you done to her?’

The disgust returned. ‘I do not expect
you
to understand,’ she said.

Delphine had dropped her reticule without realizing; she turned in horror and met Theo’s eyes – and saw the same horror mirrored there.

Alba screamed, a scream such as ladies give when they are going to faint, and Theo caught her just as she fell, Delphine going to her other side. A doctor came running in, and Benedict spoke
quickly of what had happened, his voice racing over what Miss Waring had said.

‘An emetic,’ shouted the doctor. ‘Bring me Ipecac.’

As she held Alba, supporting her shoulders in her lap as she sank to the floor, Delphine noticed that the young woman’s gown smelled strongly of violet. She saw Theo relinquish Alba and
glance at Daisy on the bed, as though he did not know who he should be praying for first. The doctor slapped the child and shook her, and her eyelashes began to blink. Delphine sought Theo with her
eyes, and he held her gaze, held it as though he took succour from her sympathy, and they looked at each other in the reddish-darkness, looked at each other with sympathy, as though for the first
time they were companions, and the past meant nothing.

Miss Waring, ignored, had stepped back, looking around her in a slightly bemused, even amused way. Alba had returned to consciousness and was sobbing, glancing at her aunt and then shielding her
face with her hands.

‘Oh, hush, you wretch,’ said Miss Waring. ‘Hush, hush.’

She turned, as though to go; but Theo barred her way.

‘Why have you done this?’ he said.

She tilted her head, and her expression softened. Delphine saw regard there; perhaps that was the only thing she had not faked. Her regard for the clergyman; her belief in the efficacy of
prayers.

‘To protect them,’ she said. ‘In their moment of best happiness. Before men forced themselves upon them. Before every piece of their innocence was washed away.’ She was
rubbing at her wrist, where Benedict had seized her.

‘Why not me?’ shrieked Alba. ‘Why hurt them?’

‘I was not hurting them,’ said Miss Waring slowly, as though she was speaking to a simpleton. ‘I was saving them. And I saved them because they were pure. There is nothing pure
in you, Alba.’ She addressed Theo. ‘You astonish me, taking to her,’ she said. ‘Oh, it was too late for her – much too late. She is mine, you know, my daughter –
and as for her father . . .’ Disgust shivered across her face, and she could barely get the next words out. With another glance at Alba: ‘Oh, look at you! Does that surprise you? Do you
want to faint again? My daughter was born sinful, Mr Hallam, and no holy water could ever wash that away.’

It was Theo who, with a gesture only, showed Miss Waring that she was to go, to be taken to another room to await the constable. She only smiled, and looked behind her towards Daisy and said:
‘You have taken your medicine well, my lamb. Taken it well.’

A few minutes later they found Mrs Quillian outside, disorientated and distressed. She had lost Miss Waring in the crowds, she said, did anyone know where she was? By that
time, little Daisy had been borne from that place in her father’s arms, followed by the doctor, so that her mother might hold her. She was still alive, they were told, but the next few hours
would be critical. The fireworks had long since ceased, and the crowds had already ebbed away.

Alba clung to Theo’s arm; she had not ceased weeping since the revelation that Miss Waring was her mother. ‘I cannot believe it,’ she said, her voice trembling as he spoke
gently to her. Mrs Quillian, told the news by Edmund, went to the girl’s other side to try and comfort her, the shock clear on her face.

‘You must try to compose yourself,’ Theo said. ‘I know it is difficult. Would you prefer to be with Mrs Beck? She may comfort you as I cannot.’

‘No,’ said Alba, the tears still pouring down her face. ‘I wish to be with you.’

Theo looked up; he saw the concern in Edmund’s face and the desolation in Delphine’s.

‘The carriage will be waiting for us,’ said Edmund. ‘Come now, Miss Alba, it is best if we get you home. You need to rest.’

The nurse from the Clock House was coming towards them. She touched Theo’s arm.

‘The constable asks if you would come, sir,’ said the nurse. ‘He is awaiting the wagon so that he might take her away, but she says she wishes to speak to you.’

‘What can she have to say to you?’ cried Alba. Theo shook his head.

‘You should go,’ said Edmund. ‘I will see the ladies home.’ He caught Theo’s eye. ‘And I, an expert on the mind,’ he said. ‘I never suspected
her.’