Walking in Darkness

He looked blank. ‘I guess she did, but not often when I was there. But Elly started helping your mother with her English; it gave her something to do. She was lonely out there in the country, but she couldn’t bear living the life of a diplomat’s wife. They have a lot of socialising, you know; in foreign countries they tend to live in each other’s pockets, endless parties and chit-chat. Elly hated that. She wanted peace and quiet, she went for long walks through the fields, she rambled in the woods near the village. Early nights and early mornings suited her, not parties and drinking and gossip. And she took to your mother from the start. They had more in common than you’d think. They were both mothers of little girls the same age and they both had husbands whose work took them away a lot of the time.’

And did they both feel uneasy about keeping up with a husband whose ambition drove him? Afraid that they would let him down, that his lifestyle would never suit them? Did Don Gowrie make his wife feel that, for all her family money, she was somehow a failure?

Sophie watched him, wondering what sort of man he really was behind his politician’s mask, behind the charm and good manners, the carefully chosen words, the coaxing smiles. Had he loved his wife? Did he still love her? Had he loved their child, or had she only been a means to an end – the necessary child he had to have to make certain of the Ramsey fortune? If only she knew for certain, because the next obvious question was: did he love Anya? Or was she also just a means to an end? Was the Ramsey money all he had ever cared about?

‘And then there was an outbreak of measles in the village,’ he said flatly. ‘And Cathy went down with them. My wife went into panic immediately, she always did where illness was concerned, for herself or me or the child. Elly had always been delicate herself; she was ill a good deal during her own childhood, she grew up a bit of a hypochondriac. The local doctor didn’t speak English, but your mother translated for them both. The man told my wife to keep Cathy in a darkened room, to avoid problems with her eyesight, and keep her away from other children.’

‘Didn’t your wife send for you?’

He hunched his shoulders, frowning. ‘Yes, but we were short-handed; several members of staff were on vacation and I couldn’t get away.’

He’s guilty about that, thought Sophie. But does he admit as much, even to himself? The man is in denial about so many things – or has he a facility for ignoring what he finds uncomfortable to remember?

‘A few days later, the Russians invaded,’ he said, ‘and there was utter panic in Prague. I was told to get out with my wife and child. I drove down at night to get Elly and the baby. When I got there I found Elly in a state of collapse and the baby dead.’

Sophie flinched. ‘How terrible.’

Without looking at her, he went on, in a flat voice, ‘Your mother told me the baby’s temperature had soared overnight; she had tried to get a doctor, but the local man had gone off to Prague to help in the hospital where he had trained, they were asking for volunteers because they thought there might be a lot of casualties. In fact, there were very few deaths, you know – only a handful of people were killed.’ He stopped, made a face, said, ‘Anyway, your mother did everything she could, but she didn’t know what was wrong, she gave the baby aspirin and tried to get the temperature down by bathing her with a sponge and lukewarm water, but she couldn’t get the temperature down, and an hour before I arrived the baby had died.’

He stopped talking, and Sophie was so upset herself that she couldn’t look at him. She sat staring at the floor, hearing him breathe roughly.

When he started talking again it made her nerves jump like a needle on a scra

tchy record.

‘Elly was crazy,’ he said. ‘Hysterical. Screaming. Your mother and I both tried to calm her down, but we couldn’t get through to her. I didn’t even have time to think about the baby, about the death; I was too busy trying to look after Elly and not having a clue what to do for her. Then your sister came toddling into the room and Elly gave a gasp and ran to pick her up, sat there rocking her and crying.’

Poor woman, thought Sophie.

‘I tried to talk to her, but she didn’t seem to see or hear me. It was as if I wasn’t there. She just kept kissing the little girl, saying Cathy’s name over and over again. I knew you weren’t really dead, she said, I knew it wasn’t true. Then it dawned on me – she thought your sister was Cathy. My wife’s a hysteric, you see; and hysterics know they are half-acting, they know they could stop if they tried, but it helps them cope with what they can’t bear, what they find intolerable.’

‘A sort of refuge,’ Sophie said, understanding. ‘A sanctuary from what they find too terrifying to face.’

The more he talked about his wife the more Sophie understood how it had all happened. The woman was neurotic and out of touch with reality. What sort of marriage had it been for him? She couldn’t help feeling sorry for him.

He had paid a very high price for the money and power her family could give him. He had no child of his own and his marriage must always have been a sham. She had not heard love in his voice when he talked of his wife. She had heard impatience, pity, irritation – but not love.

‘Yes, I suppose that describes it,’ he said, absently, as if he wasn’t really listening, was still locked back there in the past. ‘Elly didn’t want to believe her child was dead, she knew she could never have another one and she couldn’t bear to face up to what had happened. The two children were very much alike, you see; the same colouring and size, much the same age. Elly wanted to believe it was Cathy – or maybe in her state of mind she no longer knew what was real and what wasn’t.’

‘So you asked my mother to let you swap the children – you left her a dead child to bury as her own, and you took Anya away with you.’ Sophie couldn’t help the harsh, accusing tone. Her mother had been haunted all her life by what happened that day; she had lived a lie and it had festered under the skin of her mind. Sophie remembered those visits to the grave in the little church just down the road, she remembered the day her mother stopped visiting the grave, almost never went near it again. What Don Gowrie did had destroyed their family.

She had lived a lie. Perhaps it might also explain her fatal illness? She was dying with a sickness of the blood, her whole body poisoned, as her mind had been poisoned with regret for so long.

Sophie had always believed her mother stopped visiting Papa and Anya’s grave because Johanna had married again and wanted to forget her first husband. But it hadn’t been that at all. She could not bear to remember Anya, or her own weakness in letting her child be taken away. What Don Gowrie did had destroyed their family, not the death of Pavel Narodni. When her mother married again, started a new family and deliberately turned her back on her dead first husband, her dead first child, Sophie had felt that her mother had turned her back on her, too, because she was a reminder of the wrecked family her mother wanted to forget.

If Don Gowrie had stolen Anya out of love for his wife, Sophie might forgive him, but she couldn’t forget that Don Gowrie’s whole future lay in having an heir to the Ramsey fortune. He had to have a child, a living child; and it obviously hadn’t bothered him at all to walk away from his dead child and let her be buried in a foreign country, under a stranger’s name. She did not believe he loved his wife, and he certainly had not, could not, have loved his child.

‘All you thought about was yourself!’ she threw at him, and he heard the contempt in her voice and went red then white.

‘Don’t judge me! You weren’t there. Elly wouldn’t let go of the child, she screamed and fought when I tried to take it away from her. I was terrified she was mad. Then your mother got the news that your father had been killed, and she collapsed, too. She begged me for help, I think she had some idea of going to America with us, but of course the Russians would never have let her leave. But she was desperate . . . that was when I thought of swapping the children.’

‘You talk as if they were toys,’ Sophie muttered, looking at him with dislike. ‘How could you do that to a woman who had just lost her husband?’

‘I was doing her a favour, I was taking your sister to a life of luxury, where she would never want for anything, would be loved and cared for, and would grow up in freedom. Whatever your mother says now, she knows our bargain wasn’t one-sided.’

‘You pushed her into making a snap decision when she was in shock!’

‘She wanted her child to have a better life than she could give it. I looked after her, and you – when you arrived. Your lives would have been very different if I had not helped you both.’