Fiercombe Manor (15 page)

“If they keep growing as they are, you'll have a tunnel of green by the end of the summer,” I said.

“Yes, I will have to talk to Ruck about cutting them back,” she said evenly.

We were both of us blinded in the gloom of the kitchen after the bright morning, and I think we each felt the keen embarrassment of being helpless in the dark with a virtual stranger. Nan had evidently gone for the day. When our eyes had finally adjusted, Mrs. Jelphs beckoned me to follow her out into the corridor. Cut into the oak panelling just above eye level was a hidden cupboard. She showed me how to slide my fingers behind the wood in just the right place, so the catch released and the door swung back easily.

“Always put the key back here when you've finished with it,” she said solemnly. “Some keys I always keep with me, but the rest are here.”

The chapel's key was the largest, but perhaps a dozen others hung there, each on its own hook. Some were ornate and finely wrought; all of them looked old. Above each was a tiny label, written in a meticulously neat copperplate hand. The ink was the same faded sepia I'd once seen on a cache of Victorian postcards my mother and I found in the attic of an old neighbour who had died. I found them poignant, their authors—as well as their recipients—probably now dead, the eagerly proffered anecdotes and brave endearments orphaned and meaningless. My mother thought that was a morbid sentiment. “Trust you to think of that, Alice,” she'd said when I'd foolishly tried to explain.

Despite its embellishment, the handwriting above each key was easy to read. One label in particular snagged my eye. “Nursery,” it read. Without thinking about it, I reached out with my forefinger to trace the word, my other hand resting against my stomach. Before I could, however, Mrs. Jelphs shut the cupboard door smartly.

“I'm afraid we will have to resume our tour another day; time has got away from me again. I do have a job I would like you to start today.”

I nodded as enthusiastically as I could. I didn't want her to think that because I'd had an office job in London, I felt myself above more menial tasks.

“I didn't imagine you'd want to be cooped up in the Red Room,” she said as she headed off down the passage, motioning for me to follow her. I almost tripped on a loose floorboard but managed to save myself.

“Mind how you go,” she called back to me from where she was waiting in the hall. In the weak light that filtered under the heavy front door, she looked like a subject from one of the oil paintings that studded the walls above the panelling; the planes of her pale face and the outline of her clothes lit from one side, but the rest of her shadowed, as if by an accumulation of dirt and dust.

“I'm fine—I just caught my foot,” I said.

“Still, you must take care,” she said, her eyes flicking down to my stomach so that I felt that intensity of feeling emanating from her once again. Finally she turned and I followed, avoiding the gaze of the alchemist as I passed the stairs.

In the small parlour she had cleared everything from the low table and spread it with newspaper. Various velvet-lined boxes had been opened, revealing rows of tarnished cutlery.

“It's hardly used, and I keep the boxes shut, but it still gets in,” Mrs. Jelphs said ruefully as she inspected a long-handled jam spoon.

“What gets in?” I said stupidly.

“The air, of course.”

“Oh, I see. Yes, I think it's the oxygen that blackens it.”

“No doubt. I would like you to polish it up, please. It shouldn't be left too long. There's baking soda there—I don't hold with any of those fancy new polishes, they're not as good. Mix it into a paste with a little water and apply it generously. Where the tarnish is bad
you might leave it on for a time. While it's taking, you can rinse off the other pieces in the kitchen—there's a tray here—nice and hot now, and then use this dry cloth to buff it all up. Silver's soft, so please be careful you don't dent it. It's Regency, and worth a lot of money. It was a wedding gift. Every piece was engraved, even the teaspoons and cake forks.”

She turned over the jam spoon and pointed out a small, highly ornate
S
, like something you might see captive amongst the curlicues of a grand old iron gate.

“
S
for Stanton, you see. I remember when these were always in use. They weren't just kept for best, either: Sir Edward insisted that everything worth little or out of fashion was thrown away.”

I wondered if she would say more, but she just slotted the spoon back into its box. “I'll leave you to it then, shall I?”

After Nan's breakfast I didn't feel the need to stop for lunch, and by the time I felt I'd done enough for my first day, the sun had moved round to the west and was pouring in through the mullioned windows, lighting the silver so it gleamed and betrayed every stray fingerprint. I tidied everything away and then went to the kitchen to wash my hands. My knees were stiff from kneeling at the table, even though Mrs. Jelphs had provided me with a gardening pad to cushion them. I thought it would be nice to loosen them up. After I had written a letter to Dora, I would walk back to the chapel. I could have another look inside, this time with no one to rush me.

In my room I fetched some sheets of writing paper and propped myself up on the bed, leaning on my diary for support and, since I couldn't find my pen, making do with a stub of pencil I'd found at the bottom of my handbag.

I put down my pencil and sealed the envelope carefully, in case Mrs. Jelphs thought to read what was inside. Thinking of it winging its way to London, probably aboard a mail train that used the same tracks my train had, I felt a wave of misery and something like homesickness eddy through me. It was all the more forceful because it took me by surprise: I had so far felt quite removed from home in the valley. Pulling my sleeve down over my hand, I blotted away the tears that blurred the still unfamiliar room around me and took a shaky breath. My muscles were sore, and I knew I'd feel better once I got outside, where thoughts of my uncertain future would retreat again—or so I hoped.

The key hung where Mrs. Jelphs had left it that morning, and I put my hand in to get it down. I must have knocked the smaller key to the nursery as I did; it began to swing freely on its hook. As I put out my hand to still it, I felt a strong urge to fetch it down and slip it into my pocket. I shut the door quickly; I could hardly go sneaking around in rooms I had no cause to be in, especially as I had only just arrived.

Just then a sound made me stop and look over my shoulder, back up the passageway, which seemed by some optical illusion to narrow more dramatically than it should have. It was like looking
through a telescope the wrong way. There was nothing there, of course—but something made me open the cupboard door a crack to look at the nursery key again. It was still swinging, just slightly.

I was glad to get outside, where I took the back way to the chapel so I wouldn't slip in the boggy ground by the stream. Now that I looked more closely, I could see that the rhododendron bushes were pregnant with tightly furled buds, each one the size of a child's fist. They looked as though they might burst open at any moment.

I thought I would save my inspection of the graves for another time and so headed straight down the path to the impenetrable-looking chapel door. The lock was stiff, but after some coaxing I got it to turn and stepped back into the air that was thicker and cooler than outside. I made my way up the aisle and sat down with relief on the front pew. In the air above me a whirl of dust motes glittered and turned, the sun's alchemy turning each into a speck of gold.

Despite the tranquillity of the chapel, my anxieties remained potent. Mixed in with the terror that now always lurked inside me, a dark twin to the burgeoning child, there was also disbelief. In many ways, I still couldn't comprehend what had happened to me. The very fact of it continued to come as a shock, even then. The worst moments were those treacherous seconds after waking each morning, when I would be hurled from the last, floating remnants of sleep into a wide-eyed, lurching panic.

There was a day, not too far into the future, when everything would change forever, and I was powerless to alter that. I was utterly past any point of no return. Without any conscious effort from me, my body was getting on with growing another person inside me, and I still hadn't come to terms with the strangeness of that. That women did such a thing every day offered no crumb
of comfort. In fact, when I let myself think about it, I felt entirely alone.

In the soporific atmosphere of the chapel, I forced myself to breathe out slowly. Eventually the hot wave of fear subsided, and I opened my eyes. Something caught my gaze as I did, underneath a pew against the far wall. I got up, forgetting my own worries for a moment, and went over. Crouching awkwardly, I reached under and brought out a brightly embroidered kneeler. The others in the chapel were muted in colour, dark greens and burgundies, but this one featured a stylised golden sun against a cornflower-blue background. Bringing it out had dislodged something much smaller, and I reached for it.

It was a soft toy rabbit made from some sort of plush or velveteen. Only about four inches in length, it would have fitted snugly into the hand of a small child. I had no idea how long it had been there, forgotten in the sunny chapel, but it looked new, the nap of the material unclogged with dust. It was a delicate thing, each eye a tiny black bead. Looking at it more closely, I saw the long hind legs and realised that it wasn't a rabbit after all, it was a hare. I stroked it and began to put it back, but then—driven by the same urge I'd had with the nursery key, except this time I couldn't resist—slipped it into the pocket of my skirt instead. Perhaps it belonged to one of the village children. I would ask Mrs. Jelphs over dinner.

I made more effort with my appearance for my second meal in the Red Room. Once I was dressed, I leant out of the westward-facing window in my room and inhaled deeply. What I smelt was early summer in England distilled—a heady blend of damp moss and sun-warmed stone and honeysuckle. From one of the holly bushes close to Mrs. Jelphs's summerhouse, a woodpigeon cooed and fussed.

She was already waiting for me when I got downstairs.

“I really must do something about my watch,” I said. “I'm sorry if I'm late, but it keeps stopping.”