Fiercombe Manor (29 page)
Authors: Kate Riordan
“Darling, go and tell Mrs. Wentworth we are back from our walk,” Elizabeth said, her voice surprisingly calm to her own ears. “See if she can find you a little something to eat.”
“But Mama, you said that we would have a private breakfastâ”
“I did, and so we shall. You tell her what you would like, and I will have that too. Tell her we will have it in ten minutes. Something simple.”
Isabel skipped away, satisfied.
When she had disappeared down the back stairs, Edward held the door open for Elizabeth, and they went into the library. With the door shut it was unnervingly quiet in there, the books and Turkish rugs absorbing any sounds.
“Where have you been?”
“Edward, what is wrong? You are terribly pale.”
“Please answer my question.”
“I went for a walk.”
“And Isabel?”
“She must have left the house a little later. She didn't catch up with me until I was nearly back at the house. I will speak to her about going about on her own. Is that why you are angry?”
“You didn't take her?”
Elizabeth's mind raced to make sense of it all. It must be because she had been going to the old house.
“Edward, I know the manor is not to your taste. But it's so pretty there. You should see the flowers. I saw Ruck, andâ”
“What are you talking about?” he interrupted. “What has Ruck to do with any of this?”
She spread her hands, palms turned up to the ceiling. “What has happened to make you so agitated? Is it what we talked of last night? Because if it is, then I wanted to tell you thatâ”
He cut across her words. “When the nurserymaid woke this morning, a little late, she found Isabel's bed empty. Next to the bed she found these.”
He held out something she didn't recognise for a moment. Her blank look seemed to infuriate him, and he threw them so they landed at her feet: her shoes from last night, dyed to match her dress. They were a little water-stained at the toes, and there was mud on one heel.
“I must have left them in there.”
“When?” he shouted.
She flinched. “Last night. I went in to kiss Isabel good night before I went to my own rooms. I had taken them off because my feet were swollen, and they were rubbing. I must have forgotten them. Edward, please tell me what this is about.”
He looked down at his own feet and shook his head. “You really don't remember, do you? I've always thought that was a pretence of yours, to salve your own guilt.” He pushed out something like a laugh.
She felt herself go still and cold. She was standing in a bar of sunshine, the lines of the window's struts settling in a geometric pattern across her body, but she couldn't feel it.
“What do you mean?” she said, but the words came out as a hoarse whisper.
This is it
, a voice in her head told her.
This is the thing you haven't been able to remember
. With her husband's eyes on her she racked her brain yet again for the elusive answer, the wisp of memory that she had tried to draw out and examine so many times. Her legs were trembling so much that she sat down in the nearest chair. He had looked at her as thoughâno, it couldn't be. And yet it was. Edward had looked at her as though she was a danger, not just to herself but to their daughter.
A
fter our time in the meadow, I didn't see Tom for a couple of days. Though he'd said he probably wouldn't be at the manor for dinner, I was still disappointed when he wasn't, his motorcar gone again. It wasn't just that he was good company, or that his story intrigued meâthough it did and, since our last conversation, nearly as much as Elizabeth's. It was more than that: I had found a friend.
It was foolish, of course. I was the ordinary girl who had been sent to the countryside for her health, and to have her child; he was the heir to an (albeit rather reduced) estate. In many ways, I was more Nan's equal, but as much as I liked her, I felt that Tomâdespite the differences in our backgroundsâwas more of a kindred spirit. I wondered if he thought the same about me, and blushed at the very idea. Apart from anything else, I must have looked a sight in my nightdress when he saw me in the kitchen, my hair a tangle and my feet bare.
In truth, Tom was much of the reason that I was waking happier on each glorious morning than I had for months. One day I decided to arrange my hair in a different way: pinning it up at the sides but leaving the back loose and long over my shoulders. My reflection in the mirror was an odd mixture. There were still smudges
of tiredness under my eyes but my skin was a shade or two more golden than when I'd arrived, and my hair seemed not only thicker and longer but wavier. There were even some roses in my cheeks. The baby inside me was moving only slightly, and even my back felt less stiff.
After spending the morning unpicking a tangle of old curtain tassels and cords, I wandered outside to check the thermometer.
“You're looking very well today, Alice,” remarked Mrs. Jelphs, who was in the kitchen garden snipping off stalks of chives in her meticulous way. “A little tired, perhaps, but otherwise blooming. The baby must be thriving.”
She led me back inside and pointed out a cold chicken sandwich, under a net to stop the flies. My mind went to the sleepwalking Henry eating chicken in the larder a quarter of a century earlier.
“Now, eat that before you do anything else. It's important for the baby that you eat.”
She said this to me at least once a day. I smiled my thanks and obediently drank down a tall glass of milk, which was slightly too warm, before helping myself to the sandwich. I tidied everything away and then decided to go to the summerhouse. I hadn't been for a while, but I had been thinking about it all morning. It was almost as if it called to me some days, as a siren song echoes out across the sea to a lonely sailor.
“Thank you for the sandwich. I won't be too long,” I called to Mrs. Jelphs as I left the kitchen garden. She put down her gardening scissors and peered at me anxiously, her gloved hand shielding her eyes against the sun.
“Where are you off to? It's really too warm to be walking.”
Rather cruelly, I pretended I hadn't heard and was just fastening the garden gate behind me when a shadow moved across my hand.
“You should heed her, you know.”
I recognised the dry creak of Ruck's voice and spun round to face him. He was an inch too close, and I moved back until I was pressed against the gate.
“Oh, Ruck, I didn't see you there.”
“If you mus' go, don't go far. You should pay mind to heat like this.” He cleared his throat, and I could hear the phlegm at the back of it. “I reckon they was right about the midday sun.”
I looked questioningly at him.
“Mad dogs and Englishwomen, is it now?” he said and smiled grimly.
I could feel his eyes on me as I walked towards the passage of rhododendrons, conscious of my awkward gait now the child inside me was so much bigger. After that slightly unnerving confrontation, I accidentally took the longer route to the summerhouse, and it was delicious to step inside its cool stone walls when I got there. It grew warmer as I climbed the stairs to the top, but some of the room was still in shade.
I didn't know what to expect, but the diary was exactly where I'd left it last. Evidently Mrs. Jelphs, if indeed she came at allâan assumption of mine that I was beginning to doubtâdidn't come very often. Perhaps she felt that it would be trespassing to go up there too much. I felt a prick of conscience at the thought.
Sitting down with a deep sigh of relief, I realised that Elizabeth would have done the same thing herself, when she was big with her daughter.
Just as I took up the little volume again, the summerhouse door, which I'd left ajar so any whisper of breeze might find its way in, slammed shut with a crash that reverberated up through the walls to shake the floorboards. In my surprise I dropped the diary, which
glanced off the footstool and fell open to the floor, pages splaying and spilling as the old spine broke.
Heart thudding, I scooped up half a dozen of the loose sheets, but there were hardly any dates written in the faint pencil to help me. I would never be able to work out what order they had been written in. It was then that it struck me that she might have used a pencil so she could erase her most private thoughts if she felt she needed to. Indeed, when I looked more closely, whole pages were half blank. When I held one up to the window to see better, I could just make out the indentations her pencil had made.
I collected all the sheets that had tumbled out and put them in a neat pile. Furious with myself for being so careless, I started to read anyway, drawn in as I always was. Perhaps I would be able to work out the order they had been written in as I went.
The first entries I read were mostly concerned with social engagements and dresses. There were also frequent mentions of the servants; Elizabeth's anxiety at running such a large household was evident, just as it had been in the entry about Ivy, the maid who had been going through the contents of her mistress's dressing table.
In one entry, a parlourmaid had been caught stealing, and Elizabeth didn't know what the correct punishment should be. The housekeeper had eventually said that the maid should be dismissed without her wages or a character, and Elizabeth, though she thought it too harsh, had not had the nerve to say so, to her shame.
I read on until I reached a passage that recalled the very same portrait Hugh Morton had told me about. Perhaps it was not such a very great coincidence, but it felt strange enough to meâhearing about it for a second time, and from the woman herself.
A photographer arrived today. Edward had come upon him last week in one of the villages, Painswick or Uley, I
forget which, and engaged him to spend a day here. He has been commissioned not only to take our portraits but to capture the beauty of the estate's situation: in particular my husband's beloved Stanton House. Edward even said I might have a picture of the old manor taken, since the ones made during my first year here, when my parents were alive and we had a picnic there, in the shade of the yews, have been misplaced. I know this is a sop to me, for Edward knows very well how I despise having my photograph taken. There is something intrusive and prurient about it that makes my flesh crawl. It surprises me that Edward will allow a strange man to study his wife so closely, to let him fix his gaze upon her through that box, and bid her turn this way and that and to stay still for just another minute. Perhaps he will next buy his own camera and learn the skill of photography himself. Then I should be subjected to endless sittings, no doubt: no better than a prize animal at a county show.
I once readâheaven knows whereâthat the Indians of America believe that the act of being photographed steals forever a part of their soul. It is the sort of primitive belief that would be mocked by men of science (such as Edward fancies himself to be) but I think I understand that distrust well enough. To me, it is precisely an act of possessiveness. Edward would think it a fanciful notion, of course, but I find it resonates.
He has always watched me. I didn't attach much significance to it until we were well into the first year of our marriage. I suppose I noticed itâsuch was its intensity, how could I not?âbut I didn't see anything amiss in it until later. Once I had, it was like
an overlooked figure in the background of a gloomy painting that one day leaps out at you, never to hide again. Even now, when we have been married for nearly half a decade, he will not let me out of his sight for long when we are in a room full of people. Sometimes I think he wishes to control me as he does his staff or the workings of his estateâthat he would like it if he could simply turn me off when he doesn't like what I have to say, like the fountain.
Last week we attended the Careys' ball at his insistence. I had sat down to rest in a quiet corner, just for a few moments. I could see him from where I was, but he couldn't see me. His eyes were roving over the polished and dressed heads of the crowd before I could count to twenty.
There is a strange blend of emotion in the steely fire of those blue eyes of his. Love is certainly there, I think, though perhaps I am mistaking it for desire. Sometimes I think it is all the same thing to a man when it comes to his wife, at least until she becomes nothing more than a sexless companion to him. Yet desire is not all I see in Edward's eyes: there is also frustration and contempt and evenâfor I don't think I imagine itâa little hate. Just a little.
I see it most when we are amongst other people; when we are forced together. If I am too quiet, he thinks I am rude. If I talk too much, I am craving attention like the spoilt child he thinks my indulgent parents made me. Never mind his own parents, who, from what I have gleaned, saw fit to indulge his every whim and caprice. Perhaps that's another of our fatal incompatibilities,
understood too late: as children we grew so accustomed to being adored that we are incapable of adoring, each of us brimming with resentment that we go unappreciated, our lights hidden under the other's bushel.
I have just remembered something I haven't thought of in yearsâan occasion when I enjoyed his gaze on me, when the thought of one day being alone with him made me feel faint. It was perhaps the second or third occasion we ever met, a sultry day at my uncle's house, a dozen of us gathered there for what reason I can't recall. Everyone was limp in the hot, windless air that lay heavy on us all. We sat in the garden, where tea had been laid out under the shade of the cedar, and where icing melted, sandwich paste congealed, and vases of freshly cut flowers drooped disconsolately even as I watched them. Lifting my teacup to my lips was like moving it through treacle.
Edward sat down opposite me and was joined by an irascible old gentleman who my uncle perversely invited to everything, perhaps for his own amusement, and who immediately attempted to engage Edward in a discussion about a local boundary dispute. It was much too warm for such a dull subject, and Edward was quite rude to the old man, virtually ignoring him and instead gazing at me.
I remember that I was wearing a white lawn dress with a high fluted neck and long sleeves that narrowed to tight cuffs, each of them fastened by a dozen covered buttons. I had regretted the choice as soon as I realised how warm the day was going to be, and once those blue eyes were on me, it was worse. I found myself growing unbearably hot. If I had been at home, I would have peeled off my stockings and rested my bare feet on the
parched, brittle grass. But I was not. Even so, I decided I would have to remove my gloves and unbutton my sleeves, or I would swoon.
I eased the first glove off as surreptitiously as I could, but he watched me all the while, brushing away the hair that always fell into his eyes to see me the better, and making me wonder how I ever managed the task so easily. Finally they were off, and I began to unfasten the cuff buttons of one sleeve, my fingers fumbling over them, one by one. It seemed to take hours. He continued to watch me as I tried to eat a little, my cheeks aflame as I chewed and swallowed, the perspiration prickling at my hairline.
Such a small thing, silly propriety aside. A man watches a woman remove her gloves and unfasten the buttons of her sleeves. But on such a day, in that fierce heat, the two of us quite cut off from each other by those who surrounded us, my own mother and father amongst them, I'm not sure I have ever felt so alive in the world.
How is it that I had forgotten that until now?