A Good Liar Page 20

  When Jessie woke, grey light filled the room. It was cold. For a few precious moments drowsiness blocked the pain of the previous night, but then it flooded back and she closed her eyes again. She was still sore. As she stretched for her watch from the bedside table she felt the pain in her arm from his grip. Her head throbbed. She wanted to stay quite still, to be invisible and rebuild herself without the scrutiny of neighbours. But Newton was too small for invisibility. Even curtains closed for too long would be noticed. She had to protect herself. If she drew the curtains and lit a fire all the outward signs would be normal. It was Saturday. No school, no public face was required of her. She could hide for a while behind a headache, or a sore throat, anything to keep others away until she was ready to face them.

  She didn’t want food, but she needed it. Bread and jam. The thought distracted her and she got out of bed, forcing herself through the stiffness, and reached for the gown. The torn tie reminded her and for a moment she faltered. But only for a moment. She stood straight and took a deep breath, then another, before going downstairs. Bread, jam, tea. Normal, nourishing. She laid and lit the fire in the small back room, dressed warmly, and thought about what to do. For a while thoughts jumped and swerved in her head, doubling back on themselves, stopping suddenly before veering off again, like cows in a field disturbed by a dog, fearful and confused. Back to bed, to stop herself thinking.

  When she woke again it was mid-afternoon and the light was already fading in the west, a shaft of late sun picking out the tops of bare trees that thrashed in the southerly gale. In the quiet of her room upstairs in the cold schoolhouse Jessie reached a conclusion. Andrew was lost. She just needed to work out how to rid herself of him without exciting comment. What she needed now was the company of women, undemanding friendship and support. There was only one person she could turn to: Agnes. Steady, respectable, disgusted Agnes.

  By the time Jessie had washed and changed it was almost dark, though still only mid-afternoon, just two weeks off the shortest day. She found her long coat, pulled a wool hat down over her hair, took her big torch and set off on the familiar walk to Applegarth. It was good to move. The wind calmed her. In the winter with the trees shorn of leaves the view down the drive to Agnes’s house was clearer than earlier in the year, and as she passed the gate Jessie could already see the glow in the window that meant that Agnes was at home. Normally that knowledge would have been a pleasure. This time the likelihood of seeing Agnes, so soon after the awkwardness of the previous week, made her anxious but she was still sure of what she needed to do. When she saw Agnes peep round the half-drawn curtains to check who was at the door, Jessie turned and smiled.

  Agnes’s sitting room was warm and softly lit. The red of the fire and the dark gold of the brass oil lamp burnished the scarlet of cushions and curtains. Agnes was clearly surprised, but said nothing beyond an invitation to enter. She closed the door quickly against the wind and followed Jessie into the room.

  ‘Jessie,’ she began, but stopped when Jessie raised her hand.

  ‘No, don’t say anything. I have some things I have to tell you and they won’t wait. I might lose my courage. Please, and before you ask, I don’t want any tea. Just sit here and let me talk to you.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Agnes after a short pause. ‘Talk to me.’

  Jessie began to speak, so quietly that Agnes had to lean forward on the sofa to hear what she was saying.

  ‘We’ve known each other how long? Ten years, more, since I came to Newton, and been friends for most of that, but we’ve never really talked about our lives, about the things that matter.’

  ‘But –’ Agnes began again, and again Jessie cut her off.

  ‘You may think we’ve told each other all there is to know. Maybe you have, but I haven’t, not to you, not to anyone in this village. As far as you all know I’m the schoolteacher who’s led a quiet life. That’s maybe why you were so shocked that time, because it wasn’t what you expected, contradicted what you thought you knew.’

  She looked up, expecting Agnes to say something, but there was no sound except the hiss of the lamp. She took a deep breath and continued.

  ‘Twenty years ago I was living in Barrow. It was wartime and the town was like the Wild West. The ironworks, the shipyard, thousands of people coming in from all over the place. My mother rented rooms. I was at college, in Ambleside, coming home for holidays and some weekends, when I could afford the train fare. Mam just wanted me working, out of the house, out of her way, at least that’s how it felt. Anyway, I met someone. He worked at the shipyard. He was clever and funny and I loved him right from the start. We – I fell pregnant. We knew were going to be together and we had it all planned. We would get married, I would have the baby and finish my teaching course if they let me and we would have a life together. We were young, I was just twenty, but I was sure.’

  ‘What did your mother say?’ asked Agnes.

  ‘Oh, she was more angry than upset. This wasn’t part of her plan. She thought I would get a job somewhere and send money back, or live at home and pay her back for letting me going to college. She was like that. She calculated everything. She was afraid there’d be no recompense for her “sacrifice”.’

  ‘I remember when she died,’ said Agnes quietly. ‘You didn’t grieve for her as I thought you would.’

  ‘I know. I wish I had done, but I couldn’t. There was too much hurt still between us. She – she said – it doesn’t matter now, but she said some terrible things. She wanted me to get rid of it.’

  ‘But I thought you said – ’

  ‘Oh, he died, you see. That’s what changed everything.’

  ‘Who died?’

  ‘Clive, my … fiancé. He worked at Vickers, on the airships, and he fell. No one told me. I read it in the Barrow News, that was the first I knew about it.’

  ‘Oh, my dear.’ Agnes knelt beside Jessie’s chair and held her hand, but Jessie took it away.

  ‘It’s not finished. Let me finish. Sit back where you were, or I might not be able to do this.’

  Agnes sat back on the sofa again, finding a hankie under one of the cushions.

  ‘Clive died. An accident they said. That’s when Mam tried to make me get rid of it. When I said I wouldn’t, I couldn’t, the two of them, her and her sister, started going on at me about having the baby adopted. They said no one would ever give me a job, that my life would be ruined, that it would be no good for the baby. All the things you’d expect them to say.’

  She looked at Agnes, searching for understanding or acceptance but saw nothing except the calm face. She guessed that Agnes would have agreed with Cora.

  ‘So I had the baby,’ Jessie continued, as if she was relating a story about someone else, ‘in a home for unmarried mothers in Carnforth. It was a dismal place but they weren’t unkind. Some of the other girls were in a far worse mess than me, so young, at least they seemed like children. Four days after the baby was born some people came – my mother knew them, or her sister did – and they took him away. I didn’t see them. No one told me who they were and I didn’t ask. I turned my face to the wall and got through it somehow.’

  The flow of words faltered. The two women sat facing but not looking at each other. Worlds apart. Agnes held the hankie to her mouth. She was trying not to judge, trying to understand.

  ‘What you must have gone through – I can’t imagine,’ she said. ‘Why did you never tell me?’

  ‘All sorts of reasons,’ said Jessie. ‘I buried it all deep and as time passed it was easy to keep it like that. I built a new life for myself, and the past didn’t fit with it, so I let it go. And I never knew how people might take it if they knew, what they might say. It’s so easy to judge isn’t it? I do it myself sometimes and then catch myself, jumping to conclusions without knowing what I need to know. If we trust people, we have to trust their past as well as the present. We have to assume that they acted for the best at the time, whenever and whatever was done. Don’t you think?’ />
  ‘You’re asking me?’ said Agnes. ‘When you confided in me about Andrew, I judged you. I didn’t know anything about it, not really, but I had my two penn’orth. I was shocked, I admit. I wish I hadn’t said what I said. I wanted to tell you that before, but, well, I didn’t. I’m sorry, Jessie, for what I said.’

  Jessie took a deep breath.

  ‘More things have happened. I don’t think I can deal with them alone.’

  Still Agnes seemed impassive. There was a silence that seemed to last for a long time.

  ‘Are you sure you want to confide in me, Jessie? I may let you down. I may not be able to deal with things myself, never mind help you.’

  Jessie considered this.

  ‘Well there’s something connected to what you know already. I need your advice, your calm good sense.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘I told you about the baby, and Clive’.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well I went to see the Porters, up at Mill Cottage, just after the hunt ball.’

  Agnes eyes flickered just a little, but she said nothing.

  ‘We talked for a while, and then their lodger came in. You’ve met him.’

  ‘I have indeed,’ said Agnes. ‘A nice young man, I thought. Quiet, well-mannered.’

  ‘Can you remember what he looked like?’

  ‘Yes I think so, it wasn’t very long ago, although I’ve not seen him since that day I brought him back from Whitehaven.’

  Jessie fumbled in her bag and brought out an envelope. She drew from it a tiny photo.

  ‘Look at this,’ she said to Agnes. ‘Does this young man look like John Pharoah?’

  Agnes reached for her glasses and put them on before taking the photograph from Jessie’s hand. She leaned towards the oil lamp.

  ‘Why, yes,’ she said. ‘Where did you get it?’

  ‘It’s not John,’ said Jessie. ‘The photograph is of Clive Whelan, my Clive when he was about the same age as John is now.’

  Agnes looked up. ‘Oh, my dear,’ she said. ‘You think … you think that John is Clive’s child, your child?’

  ‘I don’t know. The likeness is uncanny, you can see that yourself. When I saw him at Mill Cottage I fainted, dropped to the floor like something out of a Bronté novel. I said I’d had a dizzy turn or some such thing. Covered it up. But it was this that made me faint, I know it.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I want to be sure, but don’t know how, without telling him the truth. What if I’m wrong? Clive had two sisters. I thought maybe John could be related to them, part of Clive’s family but nothing to do with me. That’s possible isn’t it?

  ‘Of course it is. Or it could be just a coincidence.’ Agnes looked again at the photograph.

  ‘And even if it is him,’ Jessie went on, ‘what do I do then?’

  Agnes looked at her. ‘What do you want to do?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Jessie hung her head. Her eyes filled with tears. ‘It was twenty years ago. All I wanted was Clive, and he died. I never really wanted this baby. Even when he was inside me I tried to detach myself. I knew he would be taken from me, and that was what I wanted at the time. It was selfish, I know, but I was young and that was what I wanted, to get away from my mother and Barrow and make a life for myself, without Clive if that’s what had to be. But I didn’t want anyone else, anyone to be responsible for, and I still don’t.’

  Tears were coming fast and Jessie wiped her eyes ineffectually with her sleeve. Agnes went to find another handkerchief and came back with it. Jessie wiped her face and blew her nose. She looked at Agnes. ‘You said I was disgusting for having Andrew. What must you think of me now? Don’t tell me please, just help me to think about this. I don’t have to do anything, after all. He doesn’t recognise me, why should he? But I wonder if he’s trying to find me? Maybe if I moved away …’

  ‘Could you do that, really? Just leave without telling him?’

  ‘I don’t know. I love my life here, my work, the children. That could all be lost.’

  Agnes hesitated. ‘It could all be lost anyway, if –’ Her voice faltered and she looked away. ‘You know what I’m saying.’

  ‘Andrew? That’s over,’ said Jessie. ‘You were right. Don’t ask me any more about it. I’m sure you don’t want to hear it.”

  ‘Thank God,’ said Agnes. ‘My dear, I’ve been so worried. I was shocked. I’m so sorry. You needed advice and I – I can’t remember exactly what I said that day but I know it was horrid and I’m sorry. Let’s leave it there. Now you may not want anything to drink but I must. I won’t be long. Look after the fire, I’ll be back in a minute.’

  Jessie leaned back on the soft cushions in the comfortable room. She had come here to tell Agnes about Andrew, but she couldn’t. What was the point? Nothing Agnes could say would change it. She would talk to Andrew in her own time, tell him what he’d done and that it was over. After that, who knew? And for the other thing, why would Agnes know what to do any more than she did herself? Even with a friend, she was alone.

  Chapter 26

  Two figures emerged from a shaded path and turned left on to the promenade towards the station at Grange-over-Sands, the low winter sun shining into their faces. Beyond them the incoming tide advanced at the same pace, creeping over mud flats and salty grass banks. Eventually it would reach the base of the promenade, filling the massive basin of the bay. Overhead small white clouds scurried across a pale blue sky. Turnstones skittered at the edge of the tide, feasting on whatever the encroaching water might provide.

  John Pharaoh, the taller of the two, was pale faced, his dark hair blowing over his eyes from the following wind despite all his efforts to keep it under control. His shoulders were hunched against the cold and his hands forced deep into the pockets of a long coat that flapped around his legs. Beside him was an older man, walking with a brisk energy. He wore a hat pulled well down and a yellow hand-knitted scarf peeped from the collar of his coat. The man’s face was lean and ruddy, eyes watering slightly in the cold air that buffeted them both.

  For a few minutes neither man spoke. John had been up early to catch the train from Ulverston, unsure how long it would take to track down the man he was looking for. He was impatient to do so after a week and more in the house in Church Walk, laid low with a heavy cold and his aunt’s insistence that he should not risk his health again after the soaking in Barrow. Time was passing. It was nearly Christmas, he wanted to be back at Mill Cottage, but he had to see Mr Crane before going all the way back there, round the Barrow peninsular, north again and then the final trudge up the valley. At least it had been easy to find the place on Fernleigh Road. Everyone knew Miss Crane.

  John was relieved to see that Isaac Crane was not an ‘inmate’ of the home, and seemed to be in robust health, both physically and mentally. He was having trouble keeping up with the older man, leaning forward to catch what he was saying, as the words were snatched away by the wind.

  ‘Every day, about this time, I take this walk,’ Isaac Crane explained. ‘Every day it’s different, different tide, different light, different things to see in the gardens by the station. I love it. Keeps me fit. Keeps me out of the way, too. Martha’s busy time.’

  ‘Martha?’

  ‘My sister. You’ll meet her later, I’m sure. Sorry I rushed you out of the house. Like to keep to the same routine, you see. Leave the house before ten, that’s the idea. Good walk, pick up whatever I need in the town, back in time for lunch. Rain or shine, every day.’ Isaac Crane stopped and faced out across the bay. ‘See the tide? If we were out there, it would overtake and overwhelm us. So many people get caught. Can’t outrun the tide in Morecambe Bay. Power of nature, eh? Can you see the rain out there, too? It’ll miss us, with any luck. No hat?’

  ‘No,’ said John, trying in vain to control his hair. ‘Never thought.’

  ‘Never thought you’d be dragged out by some mad old man,’ said Isaac. ‘Probably thought I’d be in my dotage, d
id you?’

  ‘Not at all, Mr Crane.’ John lied: that was exactly what he’d expected. He wondered how much longer they would march along before he could sit down.

  ‘You didn’t say much in the letter, and it’s hard to talk properly out here in the wind, so we’ll head for the café across from the station and talk there. Alright with you?’

  ‘Fine, thanks. Will that be long?’

  ‘About seven minutes,’ replied his companion, ‘Or possibly eight, depending how energetic we’re feeling.’

  ‘Let’s call it six then, with this wind behind us,’ said John, and they laughed and pulled their coats a little tighter around them.

  It was warm inside the café, and steam condensed on the windows, running down into little pools on the windowsill. They ordered toast and a pot of tea and waited.

  ‘Now then, young man,’ said Isaac, ‘You’d better start at the beginning. I gathered from your letter you’re interested in my time at St Luke’s during the war, is that right? About the people in the choir?’

  ‘I know it sounds strange, Mr Crane. It all started with this,’ said John, taking from his pocket the brown envelope containing the photo of the choir’s trip to Blackpool. ‘Before I ask you about this photograph, let me explain why I’m interested in it.’

  John stopped while the waitress put a large plate piled high with buttered toast in front of them, and loaded the small table with teapot, hot water, milk, sugar, teacups and saucers.

  ‘Leave the tea to steep,’ said Isaac, sensing the tension in the young man. ‘I’ll just pour for us both when we reach a natural break. This is about your mother, you said.’

  ‘Well, two women actually.’ John was getting used to telling this tale, making it clearer for people. ‘One of the women was my real mother, the one who gave birth to me, and the other was the one who adopted me, I thought she was my real mother until very recently.’

  Isaac looked closely at him.