Chapter Forty-Three

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

O n the drive the next day Stella said very little, only stared out of the window at the grey-green slopes of Hope Valley. Grace had sent a card to the Cooks, advising them of their intention to visit. Stella had been quiet all evening, her air one of weary resignation. When Jack asked what had happened, Grace only shook her head, and he had the sense not to press.

‘This will be unutterably grim,’ Stella said at last.

‘Probably,’ Grace conceded. ‘You’re not here just to confess, though, Stella. They want to know something about how their daughter spent the last months of her life.’

‘Perhaps I should cover that before I admit I practically drove her to her death.’

‘Yes,’ Grace said, changing gear. ‘Let’s do it that way round.’

The road dipped as they approached the town – rows of soot-stained terraced houses that wove along the side of the valley. Below them, Grace could see the railway leading from the mines to the coast, and above the houses were neatly partitioned squares of land. Allotments for the workers, Grace presumed, filled with new growth.

Grace slowed to a crawl, then turned up a short terrace at ninety degrees to the main road. Above them the hillside was catching the early afternoon light, painting it yellowish grey and green, with stone walls running up it like veins on the back of a hand, and the shadows of clouds dashing across them.

Grace stopped the car and pulled on the handbrake.

‘Here we are.’

Stella cast one more glance at her, miserable and reproachful, and opened the door.

The card must have reached them. Mrs Cook stood on the threshold, wearing a neat dark red skirt and a plain blouse, with an old-fashioned cameo pinned at her throat. Grace introduced Stella, but Mrs Cook hardly looked at them, whispering her greetings, then ushering both women into the cramped front parlour.

Mr Cook was already on his feet waiting for them, as was another man – a tall middle-aged man with large eyes and sandy hair. He wore a dog collar and reminded Grace of her uncle’s basset hound.

‘This is Reverend Cooper,’ Mr Cook said, introducing him. ‘Thank you for coming.’

Grace shook hands. The parlour had flowered wallpaper, faded where the sunlight struck it, and the space was dominated by a round table covered with oilcloth. The top of the large chest of drawers was draped with tasselled embroidery work and crammed with photographs, vases and glassware. The heavy-looking clock on the mantelpiece was flanked by large photographs – a formal studio shot of a very young man in uniform on one side, and on the other, a professional shot of Tasha Kingsland, looking up at the camera with a finger coquettishly resting on her chin.

Mr Cook asked them to take a seat at the table and his wife brought in the tea tray. It was obviously their best: matching teacups heavy with gold detailing and a slightly awkward sugar bowl with a gilt spoon. Grace hoped she and Stella would prove worthy of it.

‘I’m so terribly sorry about Ruthie, Mrs Cook,’ Stella said simply as she received her cup.

‘You called her Ruthie, Miss Stanmore?’ Mrs Cook looked up with a pleased smile. ‘And please call me Jess. It said in the papers she was known as Tasha in London.’

Stella nodded. ‘She was for the most part, in the clubs where she worked and so on, but some of her friends called her Ruthie, too – me included. Grace said you wanted to know a little about her life in London.’

Jess nodded. ‘It’s driving us half-mad, not knowing. Mrs Treadwell said maybe we’d be shocked by what you have to say. But we know the world’s changed a lot since we were young.’

‘Though we thought we were wild enough,’ her husband said, smiling at her.

The basset hound looked between them. He seemed vaguely disappointed in them both.

‘We lived a rather topsy-turvy existence,’ Stella said. ‘We theatre people tend to be night owls.’

Her voice was gentle, and Grace felt herself relax. Some corner of her had been scared that Stella would be defensive, and play up her cynical ‘woman of the world’ act. This was not the ‘good country girl’ of the interview with the detectives from Scotland Yard, either. It was Stella at her best – a little sad, a little amused, kind. With a slight shock, Grace realised she wasn’t playing any part at all. This was simply Stella being herself.

She remained silent as her friend talked about the clubs, the strange life which turned day into night. Whatever life Ruthie had lived in this house, ‘Tasha Kingsland’ would get up at lunchtime, run errands, take classes or attend auditions in the afternoon, then nap before going out to work as everyone else was heading home. Stella described, in great detail, the lodgings Tasha had, the people she roomed with, its nearness to Hyde Park. How excited Tasha had been to see the king ride past one morning.

‘She said he tipped his hat to her,’ Stella added, and Mrs Cook wiped her eyes.

‘Oh, she’d have liked that.’

‘Sounds like she was having a high old time,’ Mr Cook said. Then the vicar cleared his throat.

‘I can only hope,’ he said, ‘that Ruth’s tragic end will serve as a warning to other young ladies. I have listened in horror – grief and horror – as you have described this life of sin in the fleshpots of the capital. How can you not see the desperate moral turpitude of your existence?’

Stella was staring down at the tablecloth, but when she looked up again, she didn’t look guilty or afraid. Her smile glittered. ‘It’s funny. I might have been inclined to agree with you yesterday, but telling Mr and Mrs Cook about it today, I’ve been remembering all the fun we had, and I realise I’ve been describing freedom. A girl making her own living and her own choices.’

‘A terrible living and immoral choices!’

‘I’ve always wondered, Reverend,’ Stella said. ‘Why did God give us bodies and music, if he didn’t want us to dance?’

Mr Cook looked between Stella and the vicar. ‘Freedom? That would have been our Ruthie. Both of them, her and her brother, they were after an adventure from the day they could toddle.’

‘Peter?’ Stella said, smiling at him. ‘She talked about him a lot. One of the other girls tried to get her to go to a séance, to see if they could contact him. She laughed, said he wouldn’t want her to bother him, as if Heaven was what he thought it was, he’d be busy playing cricket.’

‘It is a great pity she will never see him there,’ the vicar growled.

Mr Cook stood up. ‘Thank you for stopping by, Reverend, but it’s time for you to be off now.’

The divine looked confused and seemed to be on the point of protesting, but Mr Cook’s expression did not give the impression he was open to debate. He got to his feet and tucked his chair under the table. ‘Repent, Miss Stanmore,’ he said. ‘I’ll see myself out.’

‘Repent yourself,’ Stella murmured, just loud enough to be heard.

The front door closed, and Mr Cook stood in the doorway between the parlour and the hall for a moment, as if to check he’d gone. ‘I can see why you and our Ruthie got on, Miss Stanmore. That’s just how she would have handled the canting old bugger.’

‘Jimmy!’ his wife complained.

‘Now, Jess, you know I’m right. He wasn’t even invited today, just decided he should be here when Jess told him you were kindly paying us a visit.’ He picked up his pipe, and Stella snapped open her handbag and produced her cigarettes. ‘He stands up there shouting about fleshpots and sin, and you can see plain as the nose on your face he’s dying to give them a go himself.’

‘Please do call me Stella.’

‘Now you can get that cake, Jess. She baked it for you, ladies, then hid it when he turned up.’

Mrs Cook looked a little shy and a little pleased and ducked out of the room, returning with a saucer for an ashtray and the promised cake.

‘He does have his ways,’ she said, ‘and any sweet stuff, he eats so much there’s none left for us who made it.’

The cake was excellent, and Grace was suddenly glad that the vicar had been there after all. Once he had gone, they all felt like confederates.

There was a thumping footstep in the hall and a small child, no more than three, tumbled into the room.

‘Judith!’ an exasperated female voice called in the background. The child half stumbled, half ran towards Mrs Cook, obviously gleeful to have got away from the owner of the voice; then she caught sight of the strangers and became suddenly shy, hiding behind Mrs Cook’s chair.

A young woman followed her into the room. ‘I’m sorry, Mam. She’s learned how to open the kitchen door on her own, the little monster.’ She looked at Grace and Stella. ‘I’m Rebecca, Ruthie’s sister.’

Stella got up and kissed Rebecca on the cheek, then returned to her seat and began playing peek-a-boo with the child while asking Rebecca if she was still planning to be a nurse. Rebecca blushed and said that yes, she was.

Grace felt her throat close up as she watched the child’s expression shift from wary to curious to delighted. She toddled over to Stella and took hold of her skirt with her fat little hands, then looked up and laughed, bobbing up and down on her knees.

Grace rested her hand on her stomach. Please, be real. Please don’t disappear on me like the others.

‘She’s lovely,’ Grace said, afraid she’d been staring too long. ‘Is she yours?’

Stella picked up the child and sat her on her lap, bouncing her up and down. ‘She’s Ruthie’s.’

Mr Cook noticed Grace’s confusion. ‘Our Ruthie was a widow, Mrs Treadwell. Her husband worked with me on the trains, killed in the shunting yard a month after Judith was born. So Ruthie handed me and Jess the baby and said to me, “Dad, I’ve tried life your way, now I’m off to try life my way.”’

‘We’re glad to have her,’ Mrs Cook said. ‘She’s kept us going these last months with her ways.’

Grace nodded and smiled, and felt her insides crumble. All these women, like Lillian and Tasha, who could just have a baby, then walk away, while she – who could hardly bear the longing for a child – could not bring one living into the world. And now there was Stella, who had never wanted children at all, so easy and natural with this toddler, getting all her smiles. The miserable unfairness of it undid Grace, but she just had to sit there and endure it. No good deed goes unpunished , she thought, and pressed her fingernails into her palm to stop herself crying. Would her own almost baby feel her distress and give up on her? Is that what had happened to the others?

‘I suppose, we take comfort, too, that Ruthie was so happy when she died, what with getting a place in the chorus,’ Mrs Cook said as her daughter led Judith away again.

Stella’s face froze. Grace looked at her hands, clenched so hard in her lap now, the knuckles had turned white.

‘But, Mrs Cook,’ Stella said, ‘she didn’t get that job. After she auditioned for the vacancy in the chorus in my show—’

‘Oh, she got a better one!’

Mrs Cook stood up, fetched a folded sheet from behind the clock and handed it to Stella, but Stella shook her head. Grace reached over the tea table and took it. The handwriting was round, like a schoolgirl’s.

‘Dear Mam and Dad,’ Grace read out loud. ‘Have to write quick to get the evening post, but have to tell you this IMMEDIATE. You remember I wrote to say the audition went nicely? Well, today I went to Mr Gardener’s office to enquire, and they said how I hadn’t got it and I was so upset. Honestly, I could have just curled up on their doorstep and died. I went straight round to see Stella, Miss Stanmore, and she was ever so sweet to me. Gave me a five-bob note, too, said to buy myself something sweet on the way home, have a cry, and then get on with it the next day. So I came home, and Nancy said there was a telegram come for me. It was from Mr Gardener himself! Said there was no place for me in Stella’s show, but that he had a place for me in his new revue. I should have stayed home! Oh, but think of it. I shall be on the stage at last, and not just filling in. I’ll be part of it all from the start. More tomorrow, must dash.’

‘Oh,’ Stella said. ‘Grace, my producer just put her in another show.’

‘Now, my dear,’ Mr Cook said. ‘I’m sorry you thought she was sad the night she passed.’

‘I . . . I did,’ Stella gasped. ‘I’m so, so glad she was excited. But—’

Grace interrupted, handing back the letter. ‘But nothing. Of course it’s a tragedy she didn’t get to be on stage, but it’s a comfort she was about to go on.’

Mrs Cook passed her hand lovingly over the folded page. ‘It is that, Mrs Treadwell. It is that.’

Stella shook her head. ‘She could have got in my show. But I got jealous. I told my producer not to hire her.’

The Cooks stared at her, and the old-fashioned clock ticked away the long moments of silence. ‘You, Stella?’ Mrs Cook said at last. ‘ You were jealous of Ruthie.’

Stella nodded.

‘Well!’ Mr Cook gasped. ‘Our Ruthie. To think she was good enough to make you jealous. I wish she’d known that. It would trounce the king tipping his hat, wouldn’t it, Jess?’

‘It would indeed.’

And that was that. The visit continued while Grace sat quietly, letting the others talk about Ruthie to their heart’s content, until she looked at her watch and saw it was time for them to leave if they were going to get back to Highbridge before midnight.

A long series of goodbyes and thanks followed. Mr Cook took little Judith in his arms and walked up the hill a little way with Stella as the sun sank, to see if they could spot the pony in the field at the end of the road, while Mrs Cook and Grace said their goodbyes on the doorstep.

‘Thanks for bringing her, Mrs Treadwell. It’s meant the world to us.’

‘Of course.’ She looked up the road, where Stella and Judith were pointing into the field and laughing.

‘That’ll be coming to you soon,’ Mrs Cook said.

‘Children?’ Mrs Cook nodded. ‘I hope so, but, I’ve had problems in the past.’

Mrs Cook patted her arm. ‘I’ve been a midwife twenty years, and more than that, I have a sense, dear. Never failed me yet. Ask anyone round here.’ She looked Grace up and down very carefully. ‘You’ll carry this one. Due middle of August, aren’t you?’

Stella was very quiet on the way home.

Grace didn’t interrupt her thoughts, or react when she saw Stella wipe her eyes from time to time.

They were approaching the outskirts of Highbridge before she said anything at all.

‘This is going to sound awfully foolish, Grace,’ she said. ‘But I wish they hadn’t been so kind to me. I suppose I should be all carefree and happy again, but I still feel like I betrayed her.’

Grace flicked on the lights of the car, but it seemed to make the dusk more complete around them.

‘You did. When the next girl comes along who is better than you or prettier than you, be kind to her anyway.’

Stella gasped, then started to cry properly. Grace decided it would be best to let her get it out of herself before returning to Lassiter Court. She turned away from the house and up the dale, following the twisting road up past the Lassiter Enterprises shed, then up onto the hill overlooking them. The dale looked magical in the moonlight, washed in silvery greys and greens by the full moon. Occasional lights twinkled from farms and villages in the neighbouring valleys, and far beyond, Highbridge cast a pale glow up into the sky. Grace felt a peace entering her bloodstream, as if she was drawing something from the soil.

‘There, I’ve done,’ Stella said eventually. ‘Take me home before I freeze to death.’ She pulled her fur wrap around her shoulders. ‘The little girl was sweet, wasn’t she? I said they could write to me.’

‘She was.’ Grace pressed the ignition button and took the car out onto the road again. She wondered about what Mrs Cook had said. Somehow a little of the woman’s confidence had entered Grace’s bloodstream. She dared, very briefly, to hope.

‘I suppose I’d better start reading some of those plays my agent has sent me,’ Stella said. ‘I’ll leave tomorrow, if you’ll return the key. Unless you can write me something new, Grace? I know Ruby left a great pile of tunes for you.’

Grace shook her head. ‘No, the fox is still getting in the way.’

‘The fox?’

‘It’s my name for Jason de Witte,’ Grace said.

Stella looked thoughtful, but didn’t reply, and they finished the drive back to Lassiter Court in silence.

Her car key restored, Stella left the next day – a little pale, perhaps, but calmer.

‘Thank you,’ she said simply to Grace as Hewitt loaded her cases into the car. ‘I’ll call my agent, and, if you’d like, I’ll tell her I’ll be happy to record for Empire Records.’

‘I’ve held off recording anything from Rivera Nights in the hope you’d say that,’ Grace admitted, as they crossed the gravel and Stella lowered herself into the driving seat. She ran her fingers over the wheel.

‘I shall miss Ruby terribly,’ she said, ‘and I know that’s only a fraction of what you and Tom must feel.’

‘You could write me long letters, Stella.’

She laughed heartily at that. ‘Good God, no, but I’ll spend a fortune on telephone calls until we see each other again.’