Angry and disgusted though she was, Mona understood. The whole thing was a matter of business with Char and as such, quite apart from her affections and personal interest. If it hadn’t been so serious it would have been funny. As it was, Mona could only look at the gaunt, ungainly figure of the woman who must threaten those she would have called her friends and feel a vague impulse of pity towards her. But such tenderness could not be sustained.
“Goodnight,” Mona said abruptly.
With a gesture almost of helplessness, as if fate were too strong for her, Char went from the room. When she had gone Mona locked the door, then throwing herself face downwards on the bed, lay still for a long time. After a while the fire died down, the room grew colder and she roused herself to take off her dressing gown and get between the sheets. She lay in the darkness, but sleep was impossible. Her brain was in a turmoil. All the events of the past hours recreating themselves in vivid pictures before her eyes. She went over her conversation with Jarvis Lecker, her drive home with Michael, and then, lastly, the scene with Char.
It seemed to her that the whole week had been leading up to this climax, this moment when she would find herself in Char’s toils, trapped and unable to escape.
“I’m not quite a fool,” Mona murmured to herself. “This is only the beginning.”
She knew how quickly a thousand pounds would trickle through Char’s fingers. She was certain to gamble with it, there were places in London which would be only too ready to open their doors to her and where high stakes would soon deprive Char of any practical benefit she might gain from the money. Then she would come back for more.
The jewels would last for a time. Lionel’s gifts, which he had chosen with such care and such love, each and every one perfect of its kind because it commemorated a perfect moment, a perfect episode in their joint lives. But even those would come to an end. When the emeralds had gone, and the diamonds too, she would only have a few small pieces of lesser value to dispose of – the zircon bracelet he had bought her in Vienna because he said the deep blue-green of the stones matched her eyes – the ruby earrings with the little ring to match, which he had given her after that perfect week they had spent together in Alexandria – the pearl necklace she wore every day, which had been his last present, received only a fortnight before he died. These would all have to go and when they had gone, she could pawn or sell her furs, but after that, what then?
When the supply failed would Char spitefully fulfil her threat to go to Mrs. Vale? Or would she be content to realise that her victim could, in all honesty, do no more? Somehow Mona could never imagine Char being content. She would have some scheme, some way of forcing her to be accommodating – another Jarvis Lecker, perhaps!
Mona shuddered. It was like a nightmare. Char’s greedy fingers reaching down the years, never satisfied, never satiated.
‘What am I to do?’ she wondered. ‘What am I to do?’
She sat up in bed and rested her head in her hands. In the distance she heard the church clock strike four and after what seemed to her only a very little while, she heard it strike again. Yet still her brain found no solution. The hours might pass but always her imagination subjected her to fresh tortures, rather than to the discovery of any relief from those that were already agonising her.
‘If I were brave,’ Mona thought, ‘I’d tell Char to go to Hell and do her worst!’
But she knew that she would never have the courage to risk the destruction of her mother’s faith. She thought of Mrs. Vale’s happiness when she returned and the pride she had always evinced in her ever since she had been a child. Her mother had suffered so much in her life. Her husband, Mona’s father, had died of cancer, a slow, lingering, painful death. The doctors had been unable to do anything for him, for when the growth was discovered it was already beyond hope of operating.
And before that, when Mona had been six years old, the brother she should have had was stillborn. Mrs. Vale had lain then between life and death and when she recovered, she was told that she could have no more children. All her joy, all her interest, was therefore centred on Mona, and after her husband’s death she had clung even more closely to her only child.
Mona would never forget her mother’s gallant courage during those last months of her father’s life. Then when he had been laid to rest in the family vault Mrs. Vale, dry-eyed but with a look of suffering on her face that no one could misunderstand, had walked with her arm through Mona’s to the car waiting at the church gates. As they had driven home alone, she had taken Mona’s hand in hers.
“We still have each other, darling, we must never forget that,” she had said, her composure giving way at last into slow and painful tears.
‘How hopelessly I’ve failed her in the past!’ Mona thought. ‘But, please God, I will keep this from her. She must never know.’
Her mother’s life had always seemed to her one of crystal clarity. She had set herself a high standard and never swerved from it. She had carried out her duty as she saw it with an unfailing kindness and with an unselfish affection for mankind, that had made every task, however arduous, a pleasure and a joy. She consecrated herself to a life of devotion as completely as if she had taken the vows of a nun. Nothing was too much trouble. If a village woman was ill, Mrs. Vale would always gladly sit up all night with her. If there were difficulties over poverty, children, or pensions – any of the hundred and one little troubles which crop up in parochial life – Mrs. Vale worked indefatigably for those who were in need.
Mona knew that, quietly, and in her own way, she brought as much help and comfort to the people with whom she came in contact as any priest, yet there was nothing ostentatious in her charity. She lived the quiet, uneventful life of a gentlewoman. She tended her garden, she looked after her house, she exchanged courtesies with her neighbours, and she never interfered in other people’s concerns unless they sought her help.
She had a thousand friends, yet she was a lonely woman at heart.
Mona knew that her mother missed the perfect companionship enjoyed during her married life more than could ever be expressed in words, for she and her husband in their quiet, conventional way, had known happiness in the fullest and most complete sense. But he had died and then she must have felt the need of someone of her own flesh and blood – the support of her one remaining family tie – their child.
‘How I’ve failed her!’ Mona thought again. ‘How terribly! how inexcusably!’
How empty and desolate her mother’s life must have been all those years when she had been abroad, too engrossed in her own affairs to come home even for a few weeks. Her letters had been scanty, and she had forgotten, too, how hard it must have been for her mother to keep explaining away her absence.
‘Her pride would not have allowed her to suspect me,’ Mona reasoned.
But she knew it was something deeper than pride. It was love, a perfect trust, a confidence that now must never, whatever the cost, be destroyed. And yet what could she do? Over and over again Mona faced the issues confronting her but could find no outlet. She was trapped, completely and absolutely trapped by her own actions.
‘It’s only what I deserve,’ she told herself, ‘and yet why should Mummy suffer because I have transgressed against the code of life to which I was brought up.’
She heard the clock strike seven and got out of bed. She dressed, choosing a thick tweed skirt and a warm cardigan. Then putting on her beaver coat and tying a handkerchief around her hair, she cautiously unlocked the door and crept downstairs. In the kitchen she could hear Nanny moving about – the rest of the house was in silence. She unbarred the front door and went out.
It was dawn. The world was white with the heavy frost of the night, and the rooks’ nests of the previous year were dark patches in the delicate tracery of bare branches against a faintly yellow sky.
Mona turned away from the house and climbing over the sunk fence at the bottom of the garden walked across the fields. She felt that she must get away for a little while, must be by herself, far from the proximity of Char and her threats. The ground was crisp underfoot, every blade of grass was stiff with frost and like a tiny, pointed knife. It was cold, but the wind had fallen and there was a stillness over the world as if it awaited breathlessly the coming day.
Mona reached her favourite spot at the edge of the lake where the Priory boundary met that of the Park. She leant over the wall and then as she stood there quite suddenly the first morning song of birds came sharply to her ears. As if it awakened some corresponding joy within herself, she felt the lassitude and weariness of the night fade away and some inner spirit respond, something alive, which leapt upwards with those first high notes.
‘It’s like coming to life,’ Mona thought.
She knew that was what it was – the life of a new day pouring through her, so that she was united with a revivified and rested universe, impregnated with fresh energy and strength. That moment of wonder and palpitating beauty gave Mona a momentary vision of the vast, infinite power of creation, of the Life Force flowing through the whole world, through people and things, animate and inanimate.
Then she could see no more, it was too tremendous for her to grasp, she could only feel the loveliness and glory of it permeate her whole being. It gave her a new courage.
‘I will fight,’ she said to herself. ‘I won’t let myself be overwhelmed by the past. Somehow there must be a way of atonement, and if there is I will find it.’
She found then that her thoughts had merged into prayer – prayer for help and for the protection of her mother. She found herself speaking with the simple confidence that she had known as a child, certain and sure that God would understand and that sooner or later He would answer her supplication.
How long she stood with closed eyes and folded hands she did not know, but when she moved it was to see a soldier approaching her across the fields, his khaki overcoat a dull smudge against the whitened brussels sprouts that were glittering in the pale ray of the rising sun.
Idly she wondered who it could be – then, as he came nearer, she recognised him – it was Michael, wearing the uniform of the Home Guard. She waited until he was almost upon her before she spoke, but as he saluted her, she smiled.
“I wasn’t expecting to see you, Michael.”
“Just come off my ‘dawn patrol’. This is my quickest way home from the mound.”
He pointed to where the land behind them peaked up to overlook the valley.
