The Christie Affair(23)

‘Yes,’ I said, past the point of weeping, my hands clutching his collar. ‘More beautiful than you can imagine.’

The memory of our child’s beauty had no healing power. None of it was Finbarr’s fault and still I sent him away. With Ireland embroiled in its war for independence, he left Great Britain for Australia, where nobody would expect him to fight for any country, and he could work training herding dogs. He had wanted me to go with him but I refused. Just this past September I had written to him at the last address I knew, to tell him about Archie, the marriage I believed was impending, and my reasons for stealing another woman’s husband. I owed him that much, but I never heard back. Perhaps the words I wrote repulsed him, written by a woman he’d never imagined I could become. Or perhaps he’d simply moved again, to America, or back to Ireland. Beyond it all. A place I could never reach.

It was too soon for Agatha to move beyond anything. I packed my warmest clothes, boots and hats and gloves, so I could go for walks while I was in the country. Perhaps if I found a deserted road, I would even run. I tried to picture Agatha, running beside me, the two of us invisible to the outside world and finally equals.

I folded a skirt and thought: she headed to Godalming so she could confront Archie and me, make a great scene in front of the Owens. In her unaccustomed Sturm and Drang she’d driven off the road, then left her car and wandered out into the frigid night. First thing tomorrow morning I’d hear the news, her body had been found frozen in the hedgerow, or in the nets they used to drag the Silent Pool.

I folded a cardigan, a gift from Archie, the softest cashmere I owned, and thought: right now, Teddy might be playing upstairs at Styles. She might be reading Winnie the Pooh. Not knowing Agatha had gone.

Do you ever think about the Irish boy?

Only every day of my life.

I wrapped a pair of walking shoes in a scarf. She’d boarded a ship to America and now sat snug in a first-class cabin. The whole world and a new future ahead of her. Me having provided the impetus she needed to escape.

I snapped my suitcase shut. That was that. No more thoughts of my lover’s wife, or even Finbarr, could intrude. Whatever happened next, in its aftermath my life with Archie would begin. I had one week to myself before then. I planned to immerse myself fully.





Here Lies Sister Mary





I MIGHT HAVE STAYED in Ireland during the war if Colleen hadn’t died. As soon as I received word I knew the exact moment it had happened. I’d been walking with Brutus up from the barn, my hair loose, clapping my hands together to rid them of saddle soap. Daylight was waning while mist descended as companion to the coming dusk. And a chill came over me out of nowhere, like I’d been plunged into icy water. ‘Someone walked over my grave,’ my mother used to say.

When I received the telegram days later, nothing could keep me from home.

‘It doesn’t say how,’ I sobbed to Aunt Rosie, holding up the wired letter, a few lines, pennies saved. ‘She’s only nineteen. Why doesn’t it say how?’ And, of course, I thought, if she’d come to Ireland instead of me, she would have been safe.

Rosie thumped my back in comfort, looking solemnly at Uncle Jack. It had to be grave indeed, for someone so young to die of something that couldn’t be told in a telegram.

‘You ought to stay here with us,’ Aunt Rosie said. ‘There’s nothing you can do to fix this. And you’ll be safer here than in London.’

Perhaps I would not have rushed back to England if only I’d been told how Colleen had died. But it was the kind of news, posing the kind of question, that prevented sitting still. The only thing I could bear was being on the move. On the boat from Dublin I stood on deck gripping the handrail, refusing to smile at soldiers. ‘Come now, lass,’ an old woman hissed at me. ‘It’s your duty to send them off with happy memories.’

All I could think about was getting home to Colleen. I knew this was illogical, and yet I felt determined to see my sister. At the same time I had this sense, a vision, that as I headed to England she was on another boat heading to Ireland, both of us on the choppy Irish Sea, travelling in opposite directions, sailing past each other without so much as a wave.



When I arrived home my mother was in bed. She sat up and hugged me close but wouldn’t say a word.

‘What happened?’ I asked my father.

He took me by the shoulders, his fingers digging in in a way that made him foreign to me.

‘She ran wild,’ he said.

‘Colleen? Wild?’ I’d never heard something so absurd.

‘I won’t have my girls running wild. None of you, do you hear, Nan?’ He let go of me. His face looked changed and would be forevermore. As if someone else had stepped into his body, taken it over. I felt a tug of fear that once I knew Colleen’s story, the same would happen to me.

Megs came and took me by the elbow, her dark eyes and pointed features much like my own; she was the exact same height as me. Colleen had been the tall one. Megs and I walked through London in the summer fog, from the East End to Waterloo Bridge. ‘Walking’s the thing for grief,’ Megs said.

These were my mother’s words. ‘Walking’s the thing for grief,’ she had told us. And Colleen had looked up from her book and said, ‘Solvitur ambulando.’ At Mum’s blank expression Colleen translated the Latin: ‘It is solved by walking.’ And Mum laughed and said, ‘My clever girl.’