18 February 1908
CHARLIE HAS WARNED me against writing this in my diary, but if I do not record the truth somewhere, I fear I will blurt it all out the moment I am asked.
That, or go entirely mad. They will have to lock me up in the attic like Bertha Mason …
Yesterday evening was Nellie Frye’s twentieth birthday party up at Abingdon, so Charlie and I had to go, as you know Charlie is rather taken with her.
I was hoping that Dotty Gaskell would be there myself.
I hadn’t seen her since she visited for the night last November, and as you can imagine I was eager to continue that conversation.
I thought I would be a little daring and wear my new black silk dress from Liberty’s.
Just as we were getting ready to leave, Mummy said that measly Morry wanted to come along as well, and we had to take him with us.
Well, Charlie and I weren’t having any of that: while Morry was fetching his coat, we took to Charlie’s new Renault and left him behind!
Nellie’s do was second-rate in any case.
Dotty was there, but do you know who else showed his face?
Bloody Dicky Manvers. That was a surprise, since he has not returned one of my letters since our little brush last summer.
To make matters worse, the pair of them danced together the whole evening and ignored me entirely.
It is bad enough to take a knock from one former lover, but to take it from two at once is beyond toleration!
Naturally, I spent the rest of the party getting as drunk as I could.
But look at me going on about this all as if it matters, compared to what happened later that night. I only write it down because it explains the mood I was in as Charlie drove me home: that is to say, miserable and utterly stewed.
Charlie spent the journey trying to cheer me up, but as he didn’t know what had upset me in the first place, he was at a disadvantage.
Finally, when we were coming up to the familiar roads around home, he asked me what he could do to help.
What I wanted was a bit of fun, so I asked if he would let me have a go at the wheel.
He said no at first, but I kept on pleading, and eventually he gave in.
‘Just for a few miles,’ he said, stopping so we could switch places.
God, it was as glorious as I have always imagined!
There was a feeling of such power as I clunked up the gears.
The engine growled like a terrible dragon, and with the wind washing through my hair and the hedgerows whipping past at lightning speed, I could almost believe we were flying.
A full moon steeped the world in glorious silver.
Charlie kept shouting that we were going too fast, that I had to slow down, but I didn’t want to hear a word of it.
I went up to fourth gear – sixty miles per hour!
Charlie had told me that the car was based on the model that won the Grand Prix two years ago, and I could easily believe it.
Then, as we came roaring down the road to the village, something flashed suddenly into the headlights. A rush of yellow-brown fur and long, upright ears. I barely had time to understand what it was: I wrenched the steering wheel sharply to the side, throwing us out of the hare’s path.
I didn’t see George Allen there in the dark.
God, the sound. The initial thump, then a viscous, wet cracking. I felt it through the pedals as the car went over him.
Charlie was shouting at me, telling me to go on driving, not to stop. ‘Daddy will fix this,’ he kept saying. I wasn’t in any state to think for myself: I did what he said, even though by this point I was shaking all over and could barely see the road for tears.
When we got home, Charlie made me halt the motor halfway up the drive, so we would not wake Tom and Nora Allen.
‘Should we call the police?’ I asked.
He looked at me as if I was insane. ‘Are you joking?’
‘What if he’s still alive?’
‘He isn’t.’
Charlie made me wait there while he went to fetch Daddy.
I don’t know what time it was by then; it must have been two o’clock at least. I couldn’t stop thinking, why was the churchwarden out that late?
What had he been doing on the road? The scene kept repeating behind my eyes: the flash of hare, then George’s bulk suddenly ahead.
One of his arms had been half raised, as if to wave at us as we went past. I hiccupped back the bile in my throat.
When Daddy came out, he had Mummy and all the boys behind him, even Morry. The little creep looked delighted to be part of the action for once.
‘We have to clean this mess,’ Daddy said. He meant on the car. The grille, the wheels, the undercarriage, all spattered with it.
‘What about the body?’ asked Charlie.
George, I wanted to say, but I couldn’t make myself speak.
Daddy didn’t reply, just sent Mummy to fetch a picnic blanket from the summer house.
Rex and Charlie took it off with them in one of the other cars, leaving the rest of us to jack up the Renault and set to scrubbing.
Stephen and Harry changed the tyres and put the old ones on the bonfire heap for the morning.
One of the carbide lamps had cracked, so we had to replace this too.
We hammered a bent axle back into shape.
We checked up and down the driveway for anything we had missed.
Then we all pushed the car silently back into the coach house.
A little later, Rex and Charlie returned. They had the picnic blanket with them, this time stained dark. They added it to the pile for burning.
By the time two policemen came up to the Allens’ door this morning, we had cleared up every trace, the bonfire already blazing away. I watched through the back window as the men removed their hats, turning their faces down respectfully before knocking.
‘Remember that you know nothing,’ Mummy said, when she caught me looking.
‘But … it was my fault, Mummy. Shouldn’t I say something?’
‘Do not be ridiculous, Arabella; people like us don’t belong in prison.
’ Then she saw the look on my face, and pulled me in tightly to her chest with a soft clucking noise.
‘You made a silly mistake, darling, but there is no reason to let it ruin your life. We are all here to protect you. You will always be safe here.’
The police are saying that George Allen had a terrible accident: he was found at the bottom of the stairs in the bell tower, having fallen all the way from the top.
I could hear Mr Allen’s sobs through the walls.
Rex and Charlie must have … No, I can’t bring myself to imagine.
I only hope that this is the end of it, and now we can all just forget.
But I fear that I’ll still remember George’s face vividly as it was in that last moment – skin painted white by the headlights, his shocked eyes directly meeting mine – for as long as I live.