The Death of Mrs. Westaway

“You guessed right,” Ezra said, a little grimly. “I should have remembered not to park here. Clearly Harding did. Right, there will now be a short pause while I go for a bucket. I’m sorry, it’ll make us late for the appointment, but I can’t see to drive, and it etches the paintwork if you leave it on. Stay here, and I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“Don’t worry,” Hal said. She watched Ezra as he turned and walked back across the courtyard, leaving her alone with the car, and the cawing of the birds.

A few minutes later he returned with a bucket of warm water.

“Stand back,” he said briefly, and Hal stepped hastily out of the way just in time for Ezra to sluice the car, making the birds above screech and cackle as they rose into the air and then resettled.

“That’s as good as it’ll get without a proper car wash,” he said at last. “I suggest you get in, and we’ll make good our escape while we can.”

• • •

AS THEY PASSED THROUGH THE wrought-iron gates onto the open road, Hal felt as if an enormous weight had lifted from her shoulders, but she didn’t realize that she had let out an audible sigh of relief until Ezra turned to look at her, the corner of his mouth twisted into a wry acknowledgment.

“Glad I’m not the only one.”

“Oh.” Hal felt herself flush. “I didn’t mean—”

“Please. I’m not one for hypocrisy. It’s a horrible place. Why do you think we all got out as soon as we could?”

“I’m sorry,” Hal said. She didn’t quite know what to say. “It—it’s strange, because it’s such a beautiful building, in some ways.”

“It’s just a house,” Ezra said briefly. “It was never a home—not even when I lived there.”

Hal said nothing. Harding’s words to Mitzi echoed in the back of her head: My mother was a bitter, poisonous woman and her one aim in life was to spread that poison as far and wide as she could. . . . Ezra had grown up with that poison. They all had.

Was Harding right? Was the decision to leave the house to Hal his mother’s last act of vengeance?

“I have no interest in that place,” Ezra said. He glanced over his shoulder as they came up to a blind bend, hugging the curve of the road. “I only came back to see my mother buried. I am telling you this, Harriet, so that you understand there’s no hard feelings on my part about my mother’s will. Understand? My only wish in all this is to leave this place now and for good. You can do what you like with it, as far as I’m concerned. Sell it. Tear it down. I really don’t care.”

“I understand,” Hal said quietly. There was a silence in the car, while she searched for something to say, something to forestall the questions that would come if she let the silence stretch out too long. Control the conversation, she heard her mother’s voice in her ear. Make sure you are in the driving seat, not the client. She felt a sudden overwhelming rush of longing to know about her mother’s past, about her connection to this place. What had it been like, coming here as an orphan cousin? Had her mother felt the same oppression that Ezra had described, that Hal herself had felt? How long had she stayed? A week? A month? A year?

If only she could ask Ezra. He must have known her. The photograph, warm in Hal’s back pocket, was evidence of that—evidence that they had met, spoken.

“Your—your car,” Hal said at last, struggling for a remark. “It’s a left-hand drive, I’ve just realized. Do you live abroad?”

“I do,” Ezra said. For a minute he seemed disinclined to say more, but then he added, “I live in the south of France, near Nice. I own a small photographic gallery down there.”

“How lovely,” Hal said, and the envy in her voice was no fabrication. “I went to Nice once, on a school trip. It was beautiful.”

“It’s a nice place, yes,” Ezra said shortly.

“Have you lived there long?” Hal asked.

“Twenty years or so,” Ezra said. Hal did the maths in her head as he stepped on the accelerator to pass a parked car. He could not be more than forty, which meant he must have left England almost as soon as he left school. London had not been far enough for him.

“You live in Brighton, don’t you?” he asked, glancing across at her. Hal nodded.

“Yes. It’s nice too, the beach isn’t as spectacular as Nice, but . . . I don’t know. I can’t imagine living far from the sea.”

“Me either.”

They continued in silence for a while. It was only when they reached the outskirts of Penzance that something occurred to Hal and she broke the quiet in the car.

“Un—” The phrase felt strange and false on her tongue, but she forced it out. “Uncle Ezra, do you—do you speak French?”

He glanced across from the road, his expression a little quizzical, with an element of some skepticism Hal couldn’t quite pin down.

“I do. Why do you ask?”

“I wondered . . . I heard a phrase . . . après moi, le déluge. What does it mean? It’s something about a flood, isn’t it?”

“Literally, yes.” Ezra shot her a look, and then indicated a turn in front of a lorry. After they had completed the turn, he spoke again. “But it’s a famous saying in France. It’s usually attributed to Louis Quinze, who was the last king before the Revolution came and destroyed his son. The literal meaning is, as you say, ‘after me comes the flood’—but the real meaning is something more profound and ambiguous. . . . It means either, ‘after I go, everything will collapse into chaos, because I have been the only person holding up the dam,’ or else something even darker.”

“Even darker?” Hal said. She gave a small laugh. “That’s pretty dark already.”

“It depends how you take it, though. Does it mean, ‘I am dying, I have done all I can to prevent this, but now it must take its course,’ or does it mean . . .” He paused, waiting for a gap in the traffic, and Hal realized she understood what he was saying.

“I suppose there’s a sense of . . . not just knowing what may come, but willing it to happen,” she said. “Acknowledging your part in precipitating it. Is that what you’re saying?”

“Exactly.”

Hal could not quite work out what to say in reply to this. The thought came to her again: an old woman, knowing the end was coming near, rubbing her hands as she drew up the will that was to set her nearest and dearest at each other’s throats. Had it really been as calculatingly vicious as that?

There was no love lost between Harding and Ezra, you didn’t have to be a cold reader to work that out. But what was her own part in all this?

They drove the last mile or so in silence, Hal lost in her own thoughts, until at last Ezra drew into a car park and stopped the car, pulling up the hand brake with a crunch and killing the engine.

“Well, here we are. There’s just one hitch.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s twelve twenty. I think we’ve missed the appointment.”

“Oh.” Hal said. She glanced at the clock on the dashboard, and felt a sudden sickening mix of emotions wash over her—a queasy relief at not having to face Mr. Treswick today, and trepidation at the thought of Harding’s reaction, and at the knowledge that she had only postponed the encounter. “Fuck.” It was out before she had considered it, and she bit her lip. The word was not in keeping with the image she was trying to present to the Westaways—meek, unassuming little Harriet, butter wouldn’t melt. Swearing wasn’t part of the deal, and she felt as cross with herself as if she’d sworn at a client. The pink on her cheeks was real, though it was a flush of annoyance at her own unguardedness, rather than shame. “Sorry, that was—”

“Oh, for God’s sake, you’re an adult. I’m not your keeper. And while we’re at it, can we stop with the Uncle Ezra business? I’m not your uncle.”

Hal flinched in spite of herself, and perhaps Ezra noticed, for he rephrased.

“I didn’t mean that as coldly as it sounded. But we’ve never met. Uncle implies a relationship that we don’t have—and as I said before, Harding has the monopoly on hypocrisy in this family. I’m done with all that.”