Welcome to this exciting new development of This Itch of Writing. All Things Invisible is my brand-new historical crime novel, serialised here on Substack for paying supporters - and as taster, these first two instalments will be available to all subscribers. I do hope you enjoy it.
TWO
In the Ladies, as I tidied my face and hair, Mrs McDermott said, ‘If I’m calling you Charlotte, you must call me Veronica. And don’t worry. I won’t say a word.’
‘What about?’ But I knew.
‘The fact that he is Nicholas Purvience, but you’re not Gillian Purvience.’
It winded me. ‘So you do—’
‘My dear, no one knows what goes on inside anyone’s marriage, so I make a point of not even wondering about other people’s.’ She smiled, very kindly. ‘I’d be more worried about you, but I get the feeling you can look after yourself. Can you?’
Should I tell her the truth? That Nick’s wife didn’t want him in any way?
‘In any way, Charlotte,’ Nick had said, in a voice which made me take his hand and plait our fingers together as the cool spring sun fell over us and splashed onto the daffodils. ‘Every part of what a husband and wife should be to each other, she doesn’t want of me. Or of any man.’
Should I make it clear to Veronica that no, Nick wasn’t the usual adulterous husband spinning a line to the next pretty virgin he wants to talk into bed? That I knew he wasn’t because, being a lawyer, he’d pulled out the letter that Gillian’s solicitor had sent him, and insisted that I read it:
Now that provision for Mrs Purvience’s maintenance has been contracted, this is to confirm, formally, your agreement that the marriage between you is a purely legal connection which will continue until the first death of the contracting parties. You agree that this is for no reason of emotional, psychological or physical mistreatment of either party at the other’s hands, but the consequence of simple, marital incompatibility.
You therefore undertake that under no circumstances will you instigate a petition to divorce Mrs Purvience, and in return for this undertaking, she relinquishes any right to influence your actions or mode of life.
If, however, you do petition to divorce her, or to damage her good name by direct action or association or in any other way, she will regard everything in your mutual, legal and informal agreements as null and void, and do everything in her power to resist any divorce petition however instigated.
‘It’s not that it would absolutely wreck my career,’ Nick had said when I raised my head. ‘Though she could do a fair bit of damage. But even if I had the stomach to fight her every inch to a decree absolute, I’ve no grounds on which to do it – and I never shall have. Otherwise, I’d be asking you to marry me, Charley my darling.’ He sighed. ‘So that’s it. Living and acting as I choose is all I can offer you, and it’s not enough, not for you. You deserve everything. But that’s it for me. For life.’
And what his brains and his looks and his thin, hard body, and – it sounds ridiculous, but it’s true – the way he took his spectacles off so he could listen better … what all these things had started in me, the bleakness in his voice finished, and I gave my heart to my love, my lawyer, my Nick.
No, I decided now, I was damned if I was going to let Veronica think I was yet another deluded woman waiting for a man to leave his wife.
‘Yes,’ I said, very firmly. ‘I can look after myself.’
‘I thought so. My poor darling Dominic can’t look after himself the least bit.’ She smiled again, but sadly. ‘That’s what goes on inside my marriage.’
What with all of that, and the champagne, and then Passport Control, I hadn’t really thought about the aeroplane, but as the air hostess led the way out of the terminal and across the grass to where it stood, the wheeled steps clipped to the little doorway that gaped open, waiting for us … I could see only how the plane’s long body rested on hopelessly stumpy wings and tiny, fat wheels. Each of the twin lumps of engine had a fragile-looking propellor on the front, and a sort of extra wing had been stuck on the tail, as if only its help would keep the plane from crashing.
Somehow, they crammed us into that tin tube with – I counted miserably – the air hostess and the pilots, and ten other passengers, one each side so Nick and I were separated by the aisle. We were told to do our seatbelts up. Any minute now we’d wobble straight out over the ocean and just have to pray that—
Nick had put his spectacles on and was looking out of the window, but he turned his head and saw how the buckle of my seat-belt was chattering. ‘Are you all right, darling? Shall I do it up for you?’
‘No.’ At last it clicked closed. A ghastly man behind me was loudly telling his friend across the aisle that this Lockheed Model 10 Electra was the aircraft type that Amelia Earhart had disappeared in.
‘It really is very safe, Charley,’ Nick said. ‘All that science and engineering – very well-tried and tested. And have you any idea what training for pilots is like?’
‘Yes. Super-rigorous.’ Dad had been chaplain to one of the RAF’s Hampshire bases, and I knew the routines, the skill, the protocols. I’d even enjoyed learning the silhouettes of Allied and enemy aircraft from James’s Boy’s Own Paper, and standing on Southsea Common, hoping to spot them overhead.
I didn’t know that this was how it felt, when you were actually going up there.
‘And it isn’t a long flight,’ said Nick, reaching for my hand for a moment, before we had to break grip because the stewardess came along, offering boiled sweets – why? – and telling people who still hadn’t that they must do up their belts. I wished desperately that Nick could have been sitting in front of me, or behind me, or best of all next to me, so I could have buried my face in his chest and held his hands over my ears and almost believed none of it was happening. But you can’t, can you? You’re a big girl now and besides, you should be ashamed to frighten the children.
‘No. I’ll be fine.’ I should try – I must try – to know it: that we would drink coffee or champagne, eat smoked salmon sandwiches, land safely at Deauville, walk down the steps, and have a lovely weekend.
It was some other part of myself which cowered, trembled, snarled, and believed it was probably going to die.
But I’ll spare you the rest. If you, too, are terrified of flying then you don’t need me to tell you about it – and if you’re not, no amount of explaining will make you feel what I felt.
***
I can recommend Deauville, though, if you want to spend a weekend believing that Cole Porter has only just stepped off the eighteenth tee, and Madeleine Renaud is about to emerge from the waves – and especially if you arrive drunk on the exhilaration of having survived a flight by aeroplane. The June air is just that bit warmer and clearer than England, the idle luxury is a little more luxe, much more stylish, and confident in its idleness as somehow the English never quite manage. And if you’re in love, as Nick and I were, it’s very heaven. But Deauville has nothing to do with this story so shall we take it as read?
Talking of which, another thing which doesn’t belong in this account is Nick’s work, because it’s not mine to talk about, and a lot of it is commercially sensitive. Not that those of his clients that I’ve met have sensitivity as their leading characteristic when their whisky breath is hot on my cheek. But when it comes to business, they’re as touchy and insecure as a debutante, so if I go a bit vague, or use pseudonyms, that’s why. I hope you don’t mind.
When the taxi took us back to Deauville-Saint-Gatien on Sunday evening we were still glowing, but if I’d thought that Friday had taught the animal part of my brain that flying was safe, I was wrong. The glass of champagne didn’t help, nor did Nick’s patient explanation of the science – which in any case I knew at least as well as he did.
I’ve watched wounded destroyers creeping wearily back up the Solent; I’ve listened to the news and Alvar Lidell reading it; I’ve seen in my own home streets what the enemy can do to bodies and faces and kitchens and beds; I’ve huddled against my father in the air-raid shelter and felt a near one’s blast crump through my breast-bone – but until I sat in an aeroplane I’d never felt like a rat in a trap.
There was nothing to be done except grit my teeth, breathe, and wait for it to end.
No fog this time, and a tailwind, the pilot said cheerily an hour or so later: if we looked out of the starboard window we’d see Brighton coming up on the right, and then Worthing, and a few seconds after that we’d be overshooting Shoreham Airport itself so as to turn back into the wind for landing.
I didn’t look – but the plane tilted, and handfuls of rain spattered the window I wasn’t looking out of, and it was all horrible.
Then we were on the ground and the door was open, and it was over, though my legs climbing down the steps were still wobbly; without Nick’s sustaining arm I’m not sure I would have made it without crumpling. But in the terminal the Ladies was quiet and bright, and I washed my face and tidied my blouse and took a lot of deep breaths – and then I re-did my face and hair, with plenty of lipstick, and the mirror told me you’d probably never know. Probably.
I was passing the Aerodeck Bar on the way down again, still lightheaded from surviving, when from just inside came a thud and a series of vast crashes.
A glance through the glass of the door showed that a man had slipped getting off one of the bar seats, and somehow taken a table with him. Yellow light slid crookedly over his dark shoulders and showed one side of the ravaged face of Dominic McDermott.
I reached him almost before the barman had, and together we got him up again and slumped in a chair.
‘There we are, sir,’ said the barman, a little out of breath but unsurprised. ‘Now, did you say your good lady wife was on her way?’ He had one eye on the other customers: one or two were unashamedly staring though the rest were politely or embarrassedly pretending nothing had happened.
‘Yes. What’s time?’ Mr McDermott produced, peering about as if to see a clock.
Nick appeared, and put our bags down. ‘It’s just after four.’
‘Four in the morning? What ’f you get raided?’
‘Four in the afternoon,’ said the barman patiently. At the bar a man was very clearly waiting to be served.
‘Afternoon…’ said Mr McDermott thoughtfully. ‘Yes. She’s – having tea. Tea with friend. Said s-six. I came to see my friend Steele in the f-flying school. He needed some advice ’bout one of his pupils. Hammerhead turn. Says I’ve forgotten more than he’ll ever know, and he knows it – I mean – I know things he doesn’t know. Said I’d take take this chap up for him next week. Hammerhead turns till he’s sick if necessary. She’s fetching me at six.’
‘Perhaps some coffee?’ I said, and then to the barman. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll look after him.’
‘Thank you, miss,’ he said with relief, and went off calling, ‘Just coming, sir!’
‘McDermott, do you know where your wife is?’ said Nick clearly, in his let’s solve this voice. ‘I’ll get the number from the operator and say you’re ready to go home.’
‘N-no, she wouldn’t like that.’ Dominic was very, very drunk. ‘I’ll be fine. ’S’my fault. Mustn’t drag her back early. Sh-she needs the time to complain about me.’
‘Oh, I’m sure she doesn’t, Mr McDermott,’ I couldn’t help saying.
‘Call me Dominic. She does, though. Don’t blame her. Devoted wife – always thinking about how to help her husband. Needs a break— oc-c-casionally. Let off steam. Don’t think I don’t understand. Who’d want to be married to me? But then I saw this awful thing with poor Fernanda.’
I said cautiously, ‘Has something bad happened?’
‘Cousin – younger – sweet thing, Ferdy. Mother’s my aunt. Her father’s been killed. Friday. Murdered. Someone took an axe to him.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Nick firmly. ‘Please accept our condolences.’
‘Makes you wonder – wonder why any of us bother. Easier just to borrow the Auster from Steele and finish yourself off for good.’
I looked meaningfully at Nick over Dominic’s head, and mouthed, ‘We can’t leave him here.’ Resignedly, he nodded. I bent down to Dominic. ‘Veronica said you live quite near here. Can we give you a lift home?’
© 2024 Emma Darwin. All rights reserved.
Fascinating. I really liked "If you, too, are terrified of flying then you don’t need me to tell you about it – and if you’re not, no amount of explaining will make you feel what I felt."
And your final decision on the bar/table/fall works perfectly.
Can't wait for next installment.
Fantastic, well drawn characters maturing at just the right pace.