‘I’ll make it easy for you,’ she said. ‘I’ll take a cheque, but if you do anything underhand and the money doesn’t clear because you’ve put a stop to it, copies of those photographs will appear on your wife’s breakfast table. I can just picture the look on her sweet little face. I’ll fetch you a pen, shall I?’
It was her smug expression as she turned away that was too much for Arthur. He snatched up the heavy glass ashtray and crashed it down on the side of her head. She seemed not to react at first, but just as he was about to smash it down again, she slowly dropped to the floor and lay there in a great inert pile of red satin.
‘Happy Christmas,’ he said with savage satisfaction as he stepped around her.
Chapter Forty-Two
‘Are you going to make a New Year’s resolution?’
‘I’ve thought about it,’ said Hope in answer to Edmund’s question, ‘but frankly it feels absurd to make one when heaven only knows what 1940 will bring us.’
‘I know what you mean. All that talk of war being over by Christmas was just nonsense. I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything from Annelise’s parents, have you?’
Hope shook her head. ‘Nothing. But then I wouldn’t expect to, not now. I fear for them, I really do. If they’ve been detained and put into a camp, then … well it just doesn’t bear thinking about, not when I recall what Otto told me of his experience of being taken away in the night to be questioned. They held him in a cell for two days without food or water, then released him covered in bruises. And all for no reason other than he was Jewish!’ She suddenly realised her voice had risen above the sound of the music coming from the gramophone, and that Lady Fogg, sherry glass half raised to her mouth, was looking at her disapprovingly.
‘Sorry, Edmund,’ she said, ‘I’m making a spectacle of myself and spoiling the mood. It’s New Year’s Eve and we’re supposed to be enjoying ourselves. But really, how can we?’
‘You have no need to apologise to me,’ he said, leaning in closer, his eyes focused directly on hers. ‘I’ve heard similar stories in London. I treated a Jewish woman the other day who’d escaped here with her husband from Czechoslovakia. Both classically trained musicians, they left their home with nothing but their passports and what little savings they had. Her husband had had his fingers broken so badly while being interrogated, he can no longer play the violin the way he once did. Now he has to make do with teaching schoolchildren.’
‘The poor man,’ said Hope. ‘But what frightens me most is that this is only the beginning. There is far worse to come. For all of us.’
‘I agree. I just wish there was more I could do.’
‘Are you thinking of enlisting? I’d have thought you’d be needed as a doctor in London.’
‘That’s what I keep being told,’ he said ruefully, moving aside to let a man and a woman Hope didn’t recognise squeeze past him. Romily’s idea to throw a big New Year’s Eve party had gone down so well that just about everyone from the village had shown up. Hope had never seen Island House so full.
When Edmund had resumed his place in front of Hope, he said. ‘I keep being told that I’m in the right place ready for when the bombs do start dropping on London. There’s also the worry that at any minute great numbers of wounded soldiers from the British Expeditionary Force could arrive back from France and Belgium. So I’m stuck for the time being as a reservist.’
‘Your mother would have a fit of apoplexy if you enlisted.’
He smiled. ‘But at least I’d be out of range of her cries of hysteria.’
Hope smiled too. It was always on the tip of her tongue to ask Edmund what he really thought of his mother, but good manners prevented her from doing so; that and the feeling it was an unfair question. After all, nobody knew better than she did that family relationships were complex and not what they might at first appear.
As her gaze drifted around the crowded drawing room, observing all the cheerful faces, Hope spotted Edmund’s sister deep in conversation with Romily. Noticing the apparent ease between them, Hope thought how similar the two women were, not in looks, but in temperament; both were confident and capable, as well as clear-sighted and fearless. They were the kind of women Hope had secretly always wished she could be like.
‘I know exactly what you’re thinking,’ Edmund said, catching the direction of her gaze.
‘I very much doubt that,’ she said.
‘You’re wondering why Evelyn puts up with things the way she does when she could have stayed in Kent where she was happy. Yes?’
‘No, that wasn’t what I was thinking right then, though I have done many times before. Since you’ve raised the matter, why has she made such a huge sacrifice?’
‘It’s mostly because she has a strong sense of duty, but she also possesses something far stronger: a need to take on the impossible. And our mother, as I’m sure you’ll agree, is impossible.’
‘Meanwhile, you’re only too glad you were born a boy and therefore not expected to shoulder the responsibility of your mother when there is a daughter on hand to do it.’
Edmund frowned. ‘That’s a bit harsh.’
‘But wholly true,’ Hope said, softening her tone. ‘I feel sorry for Evelyn. She deserves better.’
‘She would hate your sympathy.’
‘I know,’ said Hope, draining her glass of punch. ‘Which is why I’d never show it. Have you really never heard from your father in all these years?’
Her question evidently took him by surprise, as much as it did herself. Edmund and Evelyn’s father was an enigma to her, a man who as good as never existed.
