The Secret Keeper

  Laurel thought of her own childhood, wondering whether it was true what Katy said. Above any other theistic system, her parents had preached the values of family; her mother, in particular, had held the line—she’d realised too late, she told them sadly, the value of family. And Laurel had to concede that if she looked beyond the good-natured bickering, the Nicolsons did come together in times of need, just as they’d been taught to do as children.

  Perhaps, too, my recent indisposition has made me more reckless than usual—after a week in the dark of my bed-room, German planes thrumming overhead, Henry sitting by the bedside of an evening clutching my hand and willing me to mend, it is quite something to be out again, drinking in the fresh air of London in springtime. As a side note—don’t you find it remarkable, Katy, that the whole world can be involved in this madness we call war, and all the while the flowers and the bees and the seasons keep on doing what they must, wise but never weary in their wait for humanity to come to its senses and remember the beauty of life? It is queer, but my love and longing for the world are always magnified by my absence from it; it’s wondrous, don’t you think, that a person can swing from despair to gleeful hunger, and that even during these dark days there is happiness to be found in the smallest things?

  Anyway, whatever the reason, he asked me to walk with him and I said yes, and so we walked, and I let myself laugh. I laughed because he told me funny stories and it was so easy and light. I realised how long it has been since I’ve en-joyed that most simple of pleasures: company and conversation on a sunny afternoon. I am impatient for such pleasures, Katy. I am no longer a girl—I am a woman, and I want things; things that I will not have, but it is human, is it not, to long for that from which we are barred?

  What things? What was Vivien barred from? Not for the first time, Laurel had the feeling she was missing an important part of the puzzle. She skimmed through the next fortnight’s journal entries until Vivien was mentioned again, hoping all would be made clear.

  She continues to see him—at the hospital, which is bad enough, but elsewhere, too, when she is supposed to be working at the WVS canteen or running household errands. She tells me that I must not worry, that ‘he is a friend, and nothing more.’ She submits as evidence reference to the young man’s fiancee: ‘He is engaged to be married, Katy, they are very much in love and have plans to move to the country when the war is over; they’re going to find a big old house and fill it with children; so you see, I am not in danger of breaking my own wedding vows, as you seem to fear.’

  At this, Laurel felt the dizziness of recognition. It was Doro-thy, Vivien was writing about—Ma. The intersection of then and now, learned history and lived experience, was briefly overwhelming. She removed her glasses and rubbed her forehead, focusing on the stone wall outside the window for a moment.

  And then she let Katy continue:

  She knows that is not all I fear; the girl is wilfully misunderstanding my concerns. I am no innocent, either; I know that this young man’s engagement is no impediment to the human heart. I cannot know his feelings, but I know Vivien’s well enough.

  More extravagant worry on Katy’s behalf, yet Laurel still wasn’t any closer to understanding why: Vivien intimated that Katy’s fears stemmed from her rigid views as to what constituted seemly marital behaviour. Did Vivien make a habit of disloyalty? There wasn’t a lot to go on, but Laurel could almost read into Vivien’s more florid romantic musings on life, a spirit of free love—but only because she wanted to.

  Then Laurel found an entry, two days later, that made her wonder whether Katy had somehow intuited all along that Jim-my posed a threat to Vivien:

  Dreadful war news—Westminster Hall was hit last night, and the Abbey and the Houses of Parliament; they thought at first Big Ben had been razed! Rather than pick up the newspaper or listen to the wireless this evening I determined to clear out the sitting-room cupboard to make room for my new teaching notes. I confess to being something of a bowerbird—a trait that shames me; I would prefer to be as efficient of home as I am of mind—and I found there the most amazing collection of trifles. Amongst them, a letter received three years ago from Vivien’s uncle. Along with the description of her ‘pleasing compliance’ (I was as riled when I read that line tonight as I was at the time—how little he ever saw of the real Vivien!) he had enclosed a photograph, still folded in with the letter. She was seventeen years old when it was taken, and such a beauty—I remembered thinking, when I saw it those years ago, that she looked like the character from a fairy tale, Red Riding Hood, perhaps; wide eyes and heart-shaped lips; and still the direct and innocent gaze of a child. I remembered hoping, too, that there was no Big Bad Wolf waiting for her in the woods.

  That the letter and its photograph should have come to light today of all days gave me pause. I was not wrong the last time I had one of my ‘feelings’. I didn’t act then, much to my eternal regret, but I will not stand by and let my young friend make another mistake with dire ramifications. Given that I cannot express my concerns in writing as I would wish, I will make the trip to London and see her myself.

  A trip she evidently took—and promptly—for the next journal entry was written two days later:

  I have been to London and it was worse than I feared. It was obvious to me that my dear Vivien has fallen in love with the young man, Jimmy. She didn’t say as much, of course, she is too practised for that, but I have known her since she was a child and thus I could see it in every animation of her face; hear it in every unspoken phrase. Worse yet, it appears she has thrown all caution to the wind; she has been repeatedly to the young man’s home, where he lives with his poorly father. She insists that ‘all is innocent’, to which I replied that there was no such thing, and that such distinctions would do her no favours if she were called upon to answer to these visits. She told me she wouldn’t ‘give him up’—stubborn child—to which I summoned every bit of steel I possessed and said, ‘My dear, you are married.’ I reminded her further of the promise she’d made to her husband in the Nordstrom church, that she would love, honour and obey, till death did them part, etc., etc. Oh, but I won’t easily forget the way she looked at me then— the disappointment in her eyes as she told me that I didn’t understand.

  I understand well enough what it is to love that which is forbidden, and I told her so, but she is young and the young are quick to presume themselves the exclusive possessors of all strong feelings. I am sorry to say that we parted on ill terms—I made one last attempt to convince her to give up her work at the hospital; she refused. I reminded her she had her health to consider; she waved my concerns aside. To disappoint a soul like hers—that face which reveals itself as if beneath a master painter’s brush—is to feel as guilty as if one had removed all goodness from the world. Still, I will not give up—I have one last card to play. It risks her eternal outrage, but I decided as my train left London, that I am going to write to this Jimmy Metcalfe and explain to him the damage he does her. Perhaps he will exercise proper caution where she will not.

  The sun had started to set and the reading room was growing colder and darker by the minute; Laurel’s eyes were glazed from reading Katy Ellis’s neat but tiny script without pause for the last two hours. She leaned back and closed her eyes, Katy’s voice swirling in her head. Had she written the letter to Jimmy, Laurel wondered; was that what had upset her mother’s plan? Had whatever Katy included in the letter— something she obviously thought persuasive enough to make Jimmy give up the friendship when Vivien wouldn’t—been enough to cause ruptures between Ma and Jimmy, too? In a book, Laurel thought, that’s exactly what would happen. There was a narrative rightness to a pair of young lovers being torn apart by the very deed they’d contrived to commit in order to buy their shared happiness. Was that what her mother had been thinking about, that day in the hospital when she’d told Laurel she should marry for love, that she shouldn’t wait, that nothing else was as important? Had Dorothy waited too long, and wanted too much, and in th
e meantime lost her lover to the other woman?

  Laurel had guessed that it was something particular to Vivien Jenkins made her the very worst person against whom Dorothy and Jimmy could make such a plan. Was it simply that Vivien was precisely the type of woman Jimmy might fall in love with? Or was it something else Laurel was intuiting? Katy Ellis—every bit the minister’s daughter— was obviously worried that Vivien wasn’t being careful of her marriage vows, but there was something else at work, too. Laurel wondered whether Vivien might have been ill. Katy was a worrywart, but her concern for Vivien’s health was of the type usually reserved for a friend with chronic illness, not a vital young woman of twenty. Vivien herself had referred to ‘absences’ from the outside world, when her husband Henry sat by her bedside and stroked her hand in convalescence. Had Vivien Jenkins suffered with a condition that made her more vulnerable to the world than she might otherwise have been? Had she experienced a breakdown of some kind, emotional or physical, that left her susceptible to a relapse?

  Or—Laurel sat bolt upright at her desk—had she perhaps endured a series of miscarriages after her marriage to Henry? It certainly explained the doting care of her husband, even, to an extent, Vivien’s drive to get out of the house when she was re-covered, to leave the domestic site of her unhappiness and do more than she was really able. It might even explain Katy Ellis’s specific concern about Vivien working with children at the hospital. Was that it? Had Katy worried that her friend was increasing her sadness by surrounding herself with constant reminders of her barrenness? Vivien had written in her letter about it being human nature, and certainly her own, to crave the very things she knew she couldn’t have. Laurel was sure she was onto something— even Katy’s reliance on euphemisms was consistent with that subject at that time.

  Laurel wished she knew more places to look for answers. It occurred to her that Gerry’s time machine would be most helpful about now. Alas, she was stuck with Katy’s journals. There were a few more entries in which Vivien’s friendship with Jimmy seemed to grow, despite Katy’s continued misgivings, and then, all of a sudden, on May 20th, an entry reporting that Vivien had written to advise she would not see Jimmy again, that it was time for him to begin a new life, and that she’d wished him well and told him goodbye.

  Laurel drew breath, wondering whether Katy had sent her letter to Jimmy, after all, and if whatever she wrote to him was at the root of this abrupt change of heart. Against the odds, she felt sorry for Vivien Jenkins—even though Laurel knew that there was more to Jimmy’s friendship than met the eye, she couldn’t help but pity the young woman who’d been so pleased with so little. Laurel wondered whether her sympathy might be influenced by her awareness of what was waiting around the corner for Vivien; but even Katy, who’d been so keen that the relationship should end, seemed ambivalent now that it had:

  I was worried about Vivien and wanted the affair with the young man to stop; now I suffer the burden of having been granted my wish. I have received a letter offering very little detail but with a tone that is not remotely difficult to decipher. She writes in resignation. She says only that I was right; that the friendship is over; and that I need not worry for everything has worked out for the best. Despair or anger I could accept. It is the submissive tone of her letter that makes me worry. I cannot help but fear it bodes ill. I will await her next letter and hope for an improvement, and I will hold fast to my certainty that what I did was done for the very best of reasons.

  But there was to be no further letter. Vivien Jenkins died three days later, a fact recorded by Katy Ellis with just the sort of grief one might imagine.

  Thirty minutes later Laurel was hurrying across the dusk-draped lawn of New College towards the bus stop, musing over everything she’d learned, when her phone started buzzing at her from her pocket. She didn’t recognise the caller number but answered anyway.

  ‘Lol?’ came the voice.

  ‘Gerry?’

  ‘Oh good, it is your number.’

  Laurel had to strain to hear through the noise on the other end of the line. ‘Gerry? Where are you?’

  ‘London. A phone booth on Fleet Street.’

  ‘The city still has working phone booths?’

  ‘It would appear so. Unless this is the Tardis, in which case I’m in serious trouble.’

  ‘What are you doing in London?’

  ‘Chasing Dr Rufus.’

  ‘Oh?’ Laurel pressed a hand against her other ear so she could hear properly. ‘And? Have you caught him?’

  ‘I have. His journals, at any rate. The doctor himself died from an infection towards the end of the war.’

  Laurel’s heart was thumping fast; she skipped over the doc-tor’s untimely end. In the pursuit of answers to this mystery, there was only room for so much empathy. ‘And? What have you found?’

  ‘I don’t know where to start.’

  ‘The important bit. And do please hurry.’

  ‘Hang on.’ She heard him drop another coin into the phone. ‘Still there?’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  Laurel stopped beneath a streetlight glowing orange, as Gerry said, ‘They were never friends, Lol. Ma and this Vivien Jenkins, according to Dr Rufus they were never friends.’

  ‘What?’ She figured she’d misheard.

  ‘They hardly even knew each other.’

  ‘Ma and Vivien Jenkins? What are you talking about? I’ve seen the book, the photograph—of course they were friends.’

  ‘Ma wanted them to be friends—from what I read, it was al-most as if she wanted to be Vivien Jenkins She became obsessed with the idea that they were inseparable—“two of a kind”, were his exact words, but it was all in her head.’

  ‘But … I don’t …’

  ‘And then something happened—it wasn’t clear what exactly—but Vivien Jenkins did something that made it evident to Mummy that they weren’t close friends at all.’

  Laurel thought of the argument Kitty Barker had spoken of: something happening between the two of them that had put Dorothy in a terrible mood and spurred her desire for revenge. ‘What was it, Gerry?’ she said. ‘Do you know what Vivien did?’ Or took.

  ‘She—hang on. Bugger, I’m out of coins.’ There came the fierce sound of pockets being shaken, the phone receiver being fumbled. ‘It’s going to cut me off, Lol—’

  ‘Call me back. Find some more coins and ring me back.’

  ‘Too late, I’m out. I’ll talk to you soon, though; I’m coming to Green- ac—’

  The tone sounded flatly and Gerry was gone.

  Twenty-seven

  London, May 1941

  JIMMY HAD BEEN embarrassed the first time he brought Vivien home to visit his dad. Their small room looked bad enough through his eyes, but seeing it through hers made the half-measures he’d taken to make it homely seem truly desperate. Had he really thought draping an old tea towel across the wooden chest made it a dining table? Apparently, he had. Vivien, for her part, did a marvellous job of acting like there was nothing remotely odd in drinking black tea out of mismatched cups while perched beside a bird on the end of an old man’s bed, and it had gone off rather well, all things considered.

  One of those things was his father’s insistence on calling Vivien ‘your young lady’ the whole time, and then asking Jim-my—in the pipingly clearest of voices—when the pair of them planned on getting married. Jimmy had corrected the old man at least three times before shrugging his shoulders apologetically at Vivien and giving the whole thing up for a joke. What else could he have done? It was just an old man’s mistake—he’d only met Doll once before, back in Coventry before the war—and there was no harm in it. For her part, Vivien didn’t seem to mind and Jimmy’s dad was made happy. Exceedingly happy. He got on a treat with Vivien. In her, it seemed, he’d found the audience he’d been waiting for all his life.

  There were times when Jimmy watched the pair of them, laughing together at some remembrance of his dad’s, trying to teach Finchie a new trick, arguing
cheerfully over the best way to bait a fish hook, and he thought his heart might burst with gratitude. It had been a long while, he realised—years—since he’d seen his father without the worry line that pulled between his brows when he was trying to remember who and where he was.

  Occasionally, Jimmy caught himself attempting to picture Doll in Vivien’s place, imagining it was her fetching a fresh cup of tea for his dad, stirring in the condensed milk just the way he liked, telling stories that made the old man shake his head with surprise and pleasure … but he couldn’t envisage it somehow. He chided himself even for trying. Comparisons were irrelevant, he knew, and unfair to both women. Doll would have come to visit if she could. Her hours at the munitions factory were long and she was always so tired afterwards—she wasn’t a lady of leisure—it was only natural she’d choose to fill her rare free evenings catching up with friends.

  Vivien, on the other hand, seemed genuinely to relish the time she spent in their small room. Jimmy had made the mistake of thanking her once, as if she did him a great personal favour, but she’d only looked at him like he’d lost his mind and said, ‘For what?’ He’d felt foolish in the face of her perplexity and changed the subject by making a joke, but he found himself considering later that perhaps he’d got it all turn about and it was only for the old man’s company that Vivien kept up his acquaintance. It seemed as likely an explanation as any. What other reason could there be for her to change her tune so remarkably?

  He still reflected on it sometimes, wondering why she’d said yes that day at the hospital when he’d asked her to walk with him. He didn’t need to wonder why he’d asked her: it was having her back after she was ill, the brightening of everything when he’d opened the attic door and seen her there unexpectedly. He’d hurried to catch up with her when she left, opening the front door so quickly she’d still been standing on the step, straightening her scarf. He hadn’t expected her to say yes, he knew only that he’d been thinking about it all through the rehearsal; he wanted to spend time with her, not because Dolly had told him to, but because he liked her; he liked being with her.