Chapter 23 Lilias
Lilias
Lilias woke up, her eyes opening slowly. She could hear someone moving around, someone making a groaning sound, as if they were in pain. Ruth! In a fraction of a second it all came back to her—the dance, Ruth’s collapse.
Harry.
A quick glance showed her he wasn’t with her in the bedroom now. Where was he? And what would Ruth think if she were to run into him in a state of undress? Well, she would jolly well think the worst, surely, since there was nothing else to think.
Throwing back the covers, Lilias frantically pulled on her clothes, listening to Ruth slowly making her way downstairs, expecting to hear her sister encountering Harry at any moment, but no voices came; just the sound of Ruth opening the back door, presumably to go to the outhouse.
Would she find the outhouse door latched? Was Harry out there?
Doing her best to be calm, Lilias finished dressing and went downstairs, where she found everything quiet, only her and Harry’s teacups giving away any sign of the previous night’s activities. Of Compass, there was no sign.
“Compass?” Lilias called to the dog softly as she took the teacups into the kitchen, but when he didn’t run to her, she allowed herself to relax a little. Here was her solution. Harry had taken Compass for an early morning walk.
Outside, the door to the outhouse opened and closed, and soon Ruth came into the cottage, dressed as she had been the previous night, in Lilias’s coat and her own emerald-green finery. Her face was pale as chalk, reflecting how much she had drunk at the dance.
“Good morning,” Lilias said softly, and Ruth pulled a face, pushing her hair back from her face with a shaky hand.
“There will never be anything good about any morning again,” she declared with a frown, sitting down at the kitchen table.
“How the hell did I end up in this godforsaken place?” She rummaged in her coat pocket, presumably for a cigarette, which she didn’t find because she wasn’t wearing her own coat.
“The cottage was a good deal closer than home,” Lilias explained, all her senses alert for Harry’s return with Compass.
“Oh, yes. I remember now,” Ruth sighed. “Harry got me back here, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” Lilias agreed briefly, sweeping on. “Do you think you can walk home, Ruthie? Only I ought to get back to David.”
Ruth sighed and pushed herself irritably to her feet. “Of course I can walk. Don’t fuss, Lily.”
“Good.” Lilias led the way to the front door, her smile brittle.
“And where is the good Mr. Smith this morning?”
“I imagine we’ll find him at Marsh House when we get back,” Lilias said, hoping it was true.
Fortunately, it didn’t seem to occur to Ruth that Harry might have stayed at the cottage the previous night; she was far too absorbed in grief for her usual instincts to be in full working order.
Besides, she didn’t think of Lilias as someone who would recklessly throw caution to the wind and sleep with another woman’s husband.
Why should she? Before last night, Lilias would never have thought of herself that way either.
The walk home was a chilly, silent plod, with Ruth, whose shoes were entirely unsuitable for country paths, placing one foot grimly in front of the other.
“My God, if I didn’t need a cigarette so badly, I might roll under a hedge and let the elements do their worst to me,” Ruth broke the silence to say, and Lilias remembered her saying pretty much the same thing the previous night.
“Not far now,” she said, wondering whether she and Harry would feel awkward with each other when they met.
She suspected he would be fine, moving things along with teasing banter, whereas she .
. . well, she might blush and stutter so much even grief-stricken Ruth would notice.
It was difficult to believe it had all really happened, and yet her body was telling her it had, even if every detail of it hadn’t already been etched onto her heart.
She longed to see him, even though she dreaded doing so at one and the same time.
But when they got back to Marsh House, there was no sign of either Harry or Compass. David was there, sitting at the kitchen table with Mrs. Symonds, but no one else.
“Where’s my dad?” David asked conversationally, glancing briefly up from the drawing he was busy with.
“Isn’t he here?” Lilias asked casually. “I expect he’s taken Compass for a walk.” No doubt Harry would return to the cottage, discover no one was there, and come on to Marsh House. That was the way things would go.
Only it wasn’t. Two hours passed. Three.
And still there was no sign of either Harry or Compass.
By the afternoon, Lilias was alternately frantic with worry and crushed by rejection.
By evening, rejection had won out, and she knew she had to accept that Harry had simply left without saying goodbye.
It helped a little that David needed her reassurance about his father’s departure, and that his feelings must be put before her own.
“Perhaps your daddy preferred to slip away quietly without any of us getting upset, David. After all, he’s going to miss you so much while he’s away.”
When David nodded thoughtfully and went off to play with his marbles, Lilias sighed with relief, asking herself if what she’d said could be true.
Hard as it was to believe that Harry would leave without saying goodbye to David, it did provide a solution to his nonappearance.
No doubt he’d woken up that morning and been swamped by guilt and regret.
Lilias sat at the kitchen table, imagining Harry dressing quickly and silently while she slept, creeping down the stairs and silently opening the front door.
Compass slipping out at the same time and trotting off to take himself for a morning walk.
Yes, that had to be the way it had happened.
For what other explanation could there be?
Compass would turn up soon as if nothing had happened, and she must behave exactly the same way when she next saw Harry, whenever that was.
Act as if nothing had happened between them.
As if her very heart wasn’t breaking apart inside her.
In the days that followed, no word came from Harry to explain why he had slipped away like that; no note to let them know about life at his new training camp.
Each morning either she or David rushed to look at the post when it came through the letterbox, but always there was nothing.
Lilias had even returned to the cottage to make sure there was no hastily dashed-off note she might have missed.
But here as well there was nothing; no sign that Harry had ever been at Lavender Cottage with her, apart from the rumpled sheets and the ash in the fireplace.
Compass didn’t return, either—not the next day, nor the next, or the next.
Until Lilias began to become convinced something dreadful must have happened to the little dog.
Without him, the house was too quiet, David’s sadness about Compass’s disappearance and his father’s departure too pronounced for him to be distracted by the schoolwork Lilias set him.
Dreading the worst, Lilias, who had already asked around the village about whether anybody had seen the dog, decided she would have to bite the bullet and go and confront Cook.
For, if something untoward had happened to Compass, Cook might well be behind it.
His previous threats were still clear in Lilias’s mind, and it would be just like him to exact some sort of mean-hearted revenge for David’s having broken his boy’s nose.
With her mind made up, Lilias put on her coat and hat and went to Ruth’s room to ask her sister to keep an eye on David while she was gone.
Ruth was sitting up in bed, where she had been for the majority of the past few days, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders, the cup of tea Lilias had brought her earlier lying untouched on the bedside table.
Lilias sighed, thinking what a dried-up husk of a person her sister had become and knowing how little there was she could do to help.
The passage of time alone would affect a cure, but perhaps, after a few more weeks, she might be able to persuade her sister to take up some useful war work so that Gloria’s death wouldn’t have been for nothing.
But for now, such things must wait while Lilias dealt with other concerns.
At least Ruth seemed to stir out of her depression a little when she learnt where Lilias was intending to go.
“Oh, Lily, darling,” she said. “Is that really a good idea? If the old bastard has done something to Compass, he’s hardly likely to admit it, is he? And he’ll only gloat about how upset you are.”
Lilias twisted her leather gloves in her hands. “I’m sure you’re right, but I have to do something, Ruthie. It’s been days. If I confront Cook, I may see something in his face to tell me whether or not there’s any foundation to my suspicions.”
“But what if you do see something? What good will it do you? You’ll never get the man to talk if he doesn’t want to. And Lily, if he does talk, you might hear something you really don’t want to hear. I wouldn’t put anything past that man.”
“Well, I have to try, don’t I?” said Lilias, her voice broken. Somehow all her losses had become focussed on the little dog. If he only turned up, came trotting up to the kitchen door without a care in the world, then she would be able to carry on, she knew she would.
Ruth reached out to squeeze her hand. “I know, darling. And of course I’ll keep David occupied if you really need to go. Unless you want me to come with you?”
“I don’t think it would be such a good idea for you to see Cook just now, do you?” Lilias said gently, moved by her sister’s generosity.
Instantly Ruth’s mouth wobbled, and she pulled the shawl more closely around her as if she would never be warm again despite the sunshine spilling into the room.