“I was wondering if you were in touch with Alice Halfyard?” she repeated. “I was saying she’s apparently quite poorly. I heard it from a friend of Mother’s who shares the same cleaner.”
“No, I didn’t know,” Jean admitted. “I only met her that once, last time I was here in the summer. I was intending to visit her again today.”
“I hope she’s well enough to see you. Poor Alice; she’s had such a sad life—and now this.”
Recalling their first meeting, Jean acknowledged that yes, she had sensed an air of spinsterish melancholy about Alice, but it was one that she recognized and didn’t therefore trouble to investigate. And it had in any case been slightly overshadowed by those repellent dolls.
“She didn’t talk about herself much,” she said. But this was no excuse; she should have asked. “Why was it sad?”
“Her sister had a baby out of wedlock and then died of peritonitis when it was still quite young. Alice and her mother had to raise the child.”
Jean nodded, remembering the photograph on the windowsill, which Alice had described as her family.
“She showed me a picture of them all together,” she said. “I didn’t realize they were sisters; Alice looked so much older.”
“I think there was nearly twenty years between them. Mrs. Halfyard was quite an age when she had her.” Susan lowered her voice, even though there was no one around to overhear. “Which may account for the girl being a bit peculiar. They do say with an elderly mother the eggs can spoil.”
“Do they?” said Jean, who had never heard any such saying and didn’t much care for it.
“Oh yes,” Susan insisted. “It’s well known. Anyway . . .” She poured herself a second cup, the color of stout, on top of the leaves of the old one. “That was just the beginning. Alice’s sister’s child, Vicky, turned out to be not quite right in the head as well, and that’s putting it mildly. Had to be looked after at home in the end—under lock and key.”
Jean pulled a face. “That sounds a bit gothic.”
Something suddenly plucked at her memory—V: V was waiting for me again today in the rain. Absolutely soaked through like a faithful dog.
“And once old Mrs. Halfyard died there was no one else to help. Alice had an awful time of it.”
“It’s a bit ironic that Alice spent her days tending the sick and had this poor child locked up at home. Couldn’t she have been looked after at St. Cecilia’s?”
Susan looked puzzled for a moment and then laughed.
“Oh, you mean Victor? We only called him Vicky as a tease because he kept his hair so long—like a girl.”
37
The once-neat garden on the corner of Wickfield Drive had an air of neglect, which filled Jean with misgivings. Unpruned rose bushes sagged over the wall; the lawn was ankle-high and ravaged by clover and yarrow. Mare’s tail had taken over the flower beds and burst through cracks in the paving.
I’m too late, she thought with dismay as she stood on the doorstep, listening to the chimes of the bell as they were swallowed up by the empty house. She rattled the mail slot and opened the flap to peer into the unlit hallway, releasing a puff of sour, medicinal air from inside.
There was no reply from the neighbors either side, but in the house opposite she had some success. As she put her hand on the gate there was the sound of barking, growing louder, and the crump of a weighty dog hitting the far side of the door, dislodging some flakes of rendering from the exterior wall. A moment later a harassed-looking woman appeared at the front window.
“What do you want?” she mouthed as the dog continued to batter itself against the wooden paneling.
Jean gestured to the abandoned house behind her.
“I’m looking for Miss Halfyard.”
The window opened an inch.
“She’s gone into the hospital. Are you family?”
“No. Just a friend. I’ve tried telephoning a few times.”
“She stayed at home as long as she could but they took her in a fortnight ago.”
She gave Jean directions and closed the window, turning to bellow at the dog. The aftershocks followed Jean up the street.
The hospital for incurables sat on the clifftop, affording the staff and visitors, at least, a glimpse of a dark and wrinkled sea. The patients, confined to their beds on the upper floors, could see only a rolling cloudscape.
Alice Halfyard, a much-reduced version of the woman Jean had met in the summer, was lying in her metal-framed bed, her skin quite yellow against the white of the sheets. Although her limbs were fleshless, under the sheets her stomach formed a swollen dome.