Page 84 of A Curious Ending

‘I suppose in a way it will be a relief,’ Mrs M said, sighing. ‘I think when you called us all together, I had pretty much decided I couldn’t go on. Knew it had to come out. You start with one lie and then it just grows. It’s no way to live,’ said the woman who had been living a lie for the past thirty years.

Lara thought she looked absolutely exhausted.

Abby murmured in her ear, ‘I believe it was one thing keeping a secret between the two of them, another thing altogether when suspicion was thrown onto others.’

Maggie Linton took up her story, ‘When the beatings started. And they did start. First with a belt, then fists and finally with any weapon that came to hand. We did our best to hide and, as I said, Mum tried to help us. But it was Lilibet that saved me. She used to make a tent with the bedclothes and oh, she would tell such stories,’ Mrs M recalled. ‘She made us forget. I think she believed the stories gave us some place to hide. She would hold my hand and tell me tales of tigers and princesses and gardens filled with lakes and flowers. We were the princesses, like our mum called us, but transported to a different place. She said she wasn’t going to let him win. She was always the strong one.’

Lara remembered the pile of children’s books that had been stacked on the counter next to where she was now standing. Belongings that Mrs M had packed up.

‘So you never lived in India?’

Mrs M laughed softly. ‘Only in our heads. Then we certainly did. For a short time, it took us away from it all. I think Lilibet chose India because she hated the cold and always said when she read me The Secret Garden she preferred the bossy version of Mary Lennox and if she had been her she would have stayed in India.’

Lara smiled sadly, remembering the feisty, humourous woman she had known. ‘And the room?’ Lara asked.

‘When I came to live here, she showed me the room she had made us on my first birthday with her. She knew we weren’t going to tell the world I was her sister and I was happy with that, in fact I was the one who insisted, but that was our secret.’

‘But that room!’ Richard Porter blurted, in shocked tones, ‘that bed!’

‘I do wish that Richard Porter was not only a kinder, more intelligent man, but that he would use the eyes God has given him. There were two beds in that room. Twin beds that had been pushed together,’ Abby commented crossly.

Lara continued, ‘Could you tell me what happened between the two of you?’

Mrs M was quietly crying now, slow tears fell and the twist of cotton and lace in her lap resembled a rag. Dr Patil reached out and took her hand and Lara thought of all the times the doctor had blocked her questions about Elizabeth’s family and how he stuck so firmly to the idea of suicide. Had he always known, or at the very least suspected what her sister had done?

‘I left home at fifteen. I couldn’t stand it any longer. Lilibet begged me not to leave her, but I just couldn’t bear it. I’d met a man at the lace factory where I worked. I was an embroiderer and he was a machinist.’ Mrs M shook her head. ‘Like many before me, I chose a man just like my father. George was a giant of a man. I knew Dad would think twice about taking him on and so, like the fool I was, I thought I would be safe. At first he made a great fuss of me but then the beatings started. But he did seem sorry afterwards, unlike Dad. So I convinced myself he loved me and I stayed. Not that I had anywhere else I could have gone,’ Mrs M admitted. ‘One night, Lilibet ran away and came to me. She said she would never let Dad touch her again. When I first opened the door, her face was so bloody I didn’t recognise her. The rain was pouring down and the blood was running in rivers on her clothes. I even found blood in her shoes. George let me take care of her and didn’t let our dad know where she was. I couldn’t let our mum know as I reckoned what she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her.’

Mrs M hung her head. The sense of shame she felt as she told the next part of her story was palpable. For a moment, it seemed like she couldn’t go on. Then Sarah reached out and took her other hand. ‘You don’t have to tell us if you don’t want to,’ she said, her voice rich with sympathy.

Mrs M looked at her and sighed. ‘I think I need to Sarah. It’s become too heavy a burden to carry on my own.’ But Lara noticed that as Mrs M continued, she spoke her words to Sarah, as if blocking out the rest of the room.

‘George had always had an eye on Lilibet and she tried to keep out of his way as much as possible. She was trying to save up for another place to stay and was about to move out when George attacked her. I came back from the shops one evening and she was huddled against the banisters. She didn’t cry and she wouldn’t speak. George had gone out. I slept with her that night on the couch. George didn’t make a fuss about this, and I should have guessed then what was wrong. In the middle of the night she whispered to me what had happened. George had raped her.’ Mrs M said each word as if it was being dragged from her.

‘I said I didn’t believe her. I was furious with her. I thought she was breaking up the only place I could think of that didn’t mean going back home. So I wouldn’t listen and just screamed at her. Can you believe it, I was jealous?’ Mrs M’s voice was close to breaking and Lara saw Sarah squeeze her hand. Dr Patil leant further forward.

Mrs M’s voice was now a whisper, ‘She begged me to leave with her, but I lashed out. All I could think was that we had nowhere to go and I thought she’d taken George from me.’ Mrs M was trembling. ‘I should have been strong for her and helped her. Instead, I just let her leave in the middle of the night.’

‘How old were you at the time?’ Lara asked her.

‘I was sixteen,’ Mrs M replied, puzzled, as if this was an irrelevant question.

‘You were only a child,’ Lara said, thinking of what her nieces had been like at sixteen.

‘What happened next?’ It was Sarah who asked this.

‘Lilibet ran to Reggie. She knew him from the printers where she worked. I think that was the only place she could think of. He was living with his mum about two miles further into the city. They took her in and Reggie and his mum nursed her. He had always loved her, but he was a small, ordinary looking man. Not the prince that Lilibet had been dreaming of. But he saw our dad off.’ Mrs M said with grim satisfaction. ‘He was a good man Reggie Porter. Even though I wouldn’t see her, he sent me messages to tell me how she was doing. Apart from those notes he sent, I just shut her out of my life. I convinced myself that she had made it up about my George to take him from me. But really I think it was my shame that kept me away.’

‘How did you come together again?’ Kate asked gently. Lara looked with gratitude towards her two friends. Her heart ached for Elizabeth and Margaret Abbott and she was struggling against the tears that threatened to overwhelm her.

Mrs M looked at Kate. ‘Well, one night, it was some years later, George came in. He was so drunk he could hardly stand. Something I said, something I did,’ Mrs M shook her head, ‘well, that set him off good and proper. For once I didn’t give in. I stood up to him. Oh, but he couldn’t have that could he. So he told me the thing that he knew would tear me apart. He told me he had raped Lilibet and that she had cried like a baby.’

Lara saw Abby clench and unclench her fists in a very un-Abby like gesture.

‘I imagine that was the evening that Margaret Linton drove a nail into a piece of wood,’ Abby concluded. Lara thought there was a degree of satisfaction in her tone.

‘Did she contact you when you were in prison?’ Lara felt it was best to skim over the next part of Mrs M’s story.

‘Prison?!’ Julian looked around him in confusion, but nobody answered him.