Some Old Lover's Ghost by Judith Lennox

Author:Judith Lennox [Lennox, Judith]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-06-222817-8
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 1997-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

‘And Daragh disappeared …?’ I asked.

‘A few weeks after that.’

There was a silence. Tilda and I were sitting in the garden room at The Red House. Clouds of blue plumbago were set against whitewashed walls and, because it was evening, the flowers of the hoya put forth their honey-scented dew. For a long time afterwards I associated that perfume with duplicity.

During the floods of 1947, the combination of rain, frozen earth and thawing snow had inundated thirty-seven thousand acres in the South Level. The army and fire service had been called in to help deal with the devastation. The Dutch government, experienced in similar disasters, had lent a pontoon crane.

‘Southam village was flooded,’ explained Tilda, ‘and the Hall was under six feet of water. Daragh lost so much – furniture, paintings, rugs – all destroyed. And his land … crops that he had sown swept away, fields covered with black mud. He believed himself ruined.’ She pressed her hand against her eyes, and I disliked myself for making her recount a past that was so obviously painful to her.

She told me that she was tired, so I left her and went to work in the little boxroom. I was looking through a photograph album when the telephone rang. Joan had gone for the evening to Oxford; I dashed along the corridor to answer it.

A woman’s voice said, ‘I wish to speak to Tilda Franklin.’

‘She’s just dropped off, I’m afraid. Can I take a message and ask her to call you back?’

A pause. Then, ‘Are you the housekeeper?’

I explained who I was, and what I was doing at The Red House. There was another silence, and then, disturbingly, a peal of laughter. ‘You are writing that woman’s biography? How extraordinary!’

I felt affronted. ‘Who is this, please?’

She didn’t answer. Instead she said, ‘Another sycophantic little piece about the Angel of Amsterdam, I suppose.’ A second peal of laughter, and then the tone of voice altered. ‘Shall I tell you the truth? Shall I tell you how that saint – that angel – threw a penniless, friendless fifteen-year-old into the street? I think I reminded her of him. I reminded her of what she couldn’t have. I reminded her of what she had destroyed.’

I said again, more urgently, ‘Who is this? Who are you?’

‘She killed him.’ Some of the anger faded from the taunting voice, and was replaced by pain. ‘She killed my father. I always wondered, and now I know.’

My heart was pounding painfully in my chest. I knew, suddenly, to whom I was speaking. ‘Caitlin?’ I whispered, but she had already rung off.

I dialled 1471, to find out where she had been calling from. By the time I put the receiver down a few moments later, I knew that Caitlin Canavan was, in the flamboyant manner of her father, staying at the Savoy Hotel.

My intention to stay the night evaporated; I had to be alone. When Tilda woke, I made her tea and chatted to her, and did not meet her eyes.

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