The Asylum (7 page)

“I’m afraid not. Bella, I’m sure, is honest, and we take great pains to ensure that all of our staff are trustworthy, but there is always the possibility . . . The room you occupied is on the floor below this, on the opposite side of the building; I shall start by—”

“Mr. Mordaunt, I am not accusing anyone here of theft; I am worried that I have left them somewhere else—the hotel in Plymouth, for example, which I gave as my address, because of—whatever has befallen me.”

“Yes, I do see that. Staying alone at an hotel—I know you don’t remember, but it suggests that you are accustomed to travelling, are you not?”

“I would not say accustomed, but yes; my aunt and I made several journeys together, after—” I almost said, after the estrangement, but changed it to “after I turned sixteen. She said it was time I saw something of the world; she used to make me buy the tickets at the station, and write ahead for our lodgings, and make the introductions when we arrived. My aunt was determined that I should grow up to be an independent woman, you see.”

“And where did you travel—abroad?”

“No, not abroad. We went to Scotland twice, and to Yorkshire, and Kent . . .”

“And Plymouth?”

“No, never—that I can recall, I mean.”

And never to Nettleford,
I thought. I had tried to persuade Aunt Vida, saying that I should love, more than anything, to see the place where I was born, only to be met with a barrage of objections: she was sure we would never find the house; it had probably been knocked down by now; the countryside there was just like the Isle of Wight, but not nearly as interesting; and so on until I gave up, inhibited by the memory of her distress that day by the lighthouse, and her impassioned cry: “You were her joy, her happiness: hold to that, and ask no more!”

I looked up from the flames and saw that Frederic was studying me intently. He blushed as our eyes met, and we finished our tea in awkward silence. I felt suddenly, overwhelmingly fatigued; he remarked upon it a few moments later and took his leave, promising to return in the morning.

I slept, that night, without the aid of chloral; a long, dreamless sleep from which I woke in grey twilight to the sound of raindrops spattering against the window. I got out of bed, moving much more freely, and pressed my face against the grille. Steady, drenching rain was splashing along the paths below and bouncing off the tops of the walls. The trees beyond were no more than dim, skeletal shapes, wreathed in vapour.

It was raining like this, I thought, when we lost our house. The autumn was almost over, and the weather had been so wet that I had not ventured out of doors for days. The roof had sprung a leak; water was dripping loudly into a bucket on the floor of Mama’s old room, and our garden had become a swamp, with rivulets streaming around the house and gouging deep channels in the sodden earth. All week the mercury had hovered beside “Rain”; there had not been much wind, only the relentless downpour. But when we woke on Saturday morning, the glass had fallen toward “Stormy,” and a heavy swell was running. As darkness gathered, the roar of the waves grew louder still, and the wind was rising.

Amy and Mrs. Briggs were away, staying with relations as they did on the last Saturday of every month. My aunt and I had finished our supper and drawn our chairs close to the sitting-room fire; she was playing patience, as she often did to settle her mind, but I could tell that she was uneasy. I was sitting with my back to the flames, listening to the gusty roar of rain upon the roof, the creaking of the house, the wind shaking the windows and flinging torrents of water against the glass, and beneath it all, the deep, echoing boom of the waves.

Without warning, the house shuddered violently. Ornaments jangled and fell; a cupboard door flew open; the floor lurched and rebounded. A roar like thunder followed, shaking the walls until my teeth rattled; I thought for an instant we had been struck by lightning, but how could that be, when we had seen no flash?

“It is the cliff,” said my aunt. “Quick, fetch the lantern.”

I seized a candlestick and hurried downstairs, with my aunt close behind me despite her rheumatism. We kept a hurricane lamp on a hook by the kitchen door; I fumbled with the chimney and the box of vestas for an age before the wick caught and the harsh white light flared up.

We hastened along the passage, and threw open the front door to the rush of wind and the deafening roar of the sea, louder and closer than I had ever heard it. I could see our four stone steps, black and glistening, and a little of the gravel path below, but the light was drowned in the confusion of the deluge, like bundles of fine steel rods hurtling past an impenetrable curtain of blackness.

“Shall I go down and see, Aunt?” I shouted, reaching for my waterproof.

“No—too dangerous—must leave now,” replied my aunt, struggling into her oilskins as I closed the door against the noise. “We must find the path—make for the vicarage.”

“Mama’s brooch!” I cried, and was racing back upstairs before she could stop me. I dashed into my room and seized the jewel in its red velvet case. My writing case lay on the bedside table; I seized that too, thrust it into the bosom of my dress, and was back in the hall before my aunt had finished tying on her sou’wester. I threw on my own oilskins and galoshes; we returned to the kitchen door and faced the downpour again. Not long before my mother died, a gate had been let into the back wall: to reach the village, we would have to climb a steep, narrow path up through the gorse for a hundred yards or more, and then follow the road—a welter of mud, after such a deluge—for at least a quarter of a mile before the lights of Niton came into view.

“The rain is too heavy!” I shouted. “If the lamp goes out, we’ll be lost!”

“Must chance it—keep together!” She seized the lamp with one hand, clutched my arm with the other, and plunged into the storm.

I must have walked this path a thousand times; even on a moonless night, my feet would carry me from the kitchen door to the gate with scarcely a thought on my part. But the light showed only a teeming chaos of darkness and rain. We were sheltered, at first, from the full force of the wind, but the lamp still flared wildly, and the hot glass hissed and sputtered as we lurched in what I could only pray was the right direction. Branches clawed my face; black, clinging mud wrenched at my galoshes. I could not tell whether the quivering I felt was simply my own body shaking with fear, or the ground itself trembling; with every thunderous crash from the sea at my back, I expected the earth to vanish from beneath my feet.

After an age of splashing and stumbling, I blundered against stone, and felt my aunt tugging me to the right until we reached the gate and began to climb. Black, streaming gorse caught at our oilskins, leaving scarcely room for us to walk abreast, and the wind grew fiercer as we dragged our way upward, tugging at my sou’wester and sending jets of icy water down my neck.

I was trying to count my steps, and had got to something like fifty, when my aunt gasped and fell heavily, dragging me down with her. The lamp flew from her hand and went out in a flare and a clatter of breaking glass, and we were plunged into absolute darkness.

“What is it?” I shouted, drawing her close and trying to sit up.

“Ankle—can’t walk.”

“I’ll help you.”

I tried to stand upright, but immediately lost my balance and fell into gorse. Prickles stung my cheek. Fighting down panic, I slid one foot across the mud until it struck something soft; I heard another groan and dragged myself back to my aunt’s side.

Slowly and painfully, I managed to get us both sitting up, with our arms around each other and our backs against the gorse. Our gloves and oilskins shielded us from the prickles, but my galoshes were full of water, and I could feel my aunt shivering. I drew her closer still and tried to arrange our oilskins to protect us as best I could. With our heads side by side, we could at least hear each other without having to shout. The gorse gave us some shelter, but the wind still swirled about us, and the rain beat down relentlessly.

“You must go on,” said my aunt hoarsely. “Can’t be too far from the road. Crawl up the path—use the gorse to guide you.”

“I won’t leave you, Aunt. I’d only get lost.”

“Keep the sound of the sea behind you. When you reach the road, keep the wind on your left till you see the lights.”

“No; you’ll freeze if I leave you.”

“We’ll both die if you stay. Might be another collapse any minute. You get help—only chance.”

I tried to picture the rest of the climb. Though the gorse bushes grew close, there were gaps quite large enough to deceive me; once off the path, I would get hopelessly entangled, or crawl blindly until I slipped and rolled to my death.

“I can’t. I’ll never find the way.”

“S’pose not,” she said after a pause. “But if the sky clears, go at once.”

Even halfway up the path—as surely we must be?—the roar of the sea was terrifying. The time could not be much past nine o’clock; nearly ten hours until the dawn, unless the clouds parted. The moon had been full a week ago, before the rain began, but even starlight would be enough to guide us. We were both shivering now, and I could not feel my feet. I wrapped my arms still more tightly around my aunt and waited for the end, trying not to imagine the ground opening beneath us, the bone-crushing fall, being buried under tons of rock and yet still conscious—and recalled, with terrible clarity, a torrent of earth and rock plummeting down the cliff, and my being suspended in midair by a tangle of roots, with red dirt spilling over me.

“Rosina! Help me!” I heard myself cry.

My aunt gave a violent start and twisted in my arms.

“What? What did you say?”

“It was—only a sort of prayer.”

She muttered something I did not catch, and subsided. I remembered my mother finding me at the mirror, and the fear in her voice when she asked me about Rosina. If we lived, I thought, I would make Aunt Vida tell me—whatever there was to tell, about Rosina, and Nettleford, and my father . . .

But still the rain beat down, and the wind whipped about us in the darkness, carrying away what little warmth remained in my body. The shivering increased until I had to clench my teeth against it. It would be the worst of ironies, I thought, if we were found frozen to death with the house still standing. I had read somewhere that shivering was the body’s way of keeping itself warm, and I began hugging my aunt rhythmically, hoping to squeeze some warmth into her. Mud squelched beneath us; I kept feeling that we were toppling to one side or the other, with only the pressure of the gorse against my back to tell me it was an illusion. Pinpoints of coloured light drifted before my eyes; for a wild moment I thought they were stars, until I realised that my eyes were tightly shut; the pinpoints were still there when I opened them. I clung to my aunt, and shook, and prayed for rescue.

Her head lolled against my cheek, lurched away, and lolled again. The rain had lessened; even the roar of the waves had receded. I realised that I was no longer shivering. My arms and legs were numb, but that did not seem to matter, as I did not feel cold anymore, only pleasantly drowsy, as if I were sinking into a warm bath . . .

I was lying in soft grass, beside a hedgerow crowded with blossom, the colours richer and more dazzling than anything I had seen: reds and crimsons and violets and pinks and whites so breathtaking I could feel them softly vibrating. Sunlight warmed my cheek; the air quivered with the chirruping of birds and the deep, resonant hum of bees, growing louder and louder until my body shook to the sound. Then the sun vanished with a colossal roar, and I was plunged back into freezing darkness, with the long, booming echoes of another landslide reverberating in the darkness below.

“’S the end,” my aunt mumbled. “Mus’ leave me.”

“Aunt, you must wake up,” I said. “We’ll die if we go to sleep again.”

I began squeezing her once more, with arms I could not feel, assuring her that we had slept most of the night away—and wishing I believed it myself—but she only stirred, and muttered something unintelligible. The rain, at least, had stopped, but the wind still swirled around us, and the sea, now that I was fully awake, sounded even louder and closer than before.

How much more of the cliff had gone? Had it taken the house this time? As I strained my eyes toward the crashing of the waves, it seemed to me that the darkness was no longer impenetrable. Looking up, I caught a glimpse of stars, blurred by a flying skein of cloud. Faint outlines of bracken coalesced around me. To see if the house was still there, I would have to stand, but my legs refused to obey me; for all the feeling in them, they might have been amputated.

What should I do? If the starlight held, and I could make my legs move, and climb the path, I could reach Niton in twenty minutes, and my aunt would be rescued within the hour. If I stayed, she would survive the cold longer—but not until morning, which I felt certain was still many hours away, even if a third landslide did not claim us.

As gently as I could, I withdrew my arm from around her, took one of my lifeless legs in both numb hands, and began to work at it, pushing and pulling until a spasm of cramp seized my calf. I did the same to the other, clutched at the gorse for support, and dragged myself slowly upright.

A pale gleam, low in the sky, appeared from behind a cloud. It was the moon, only just risen—so the time could not be much past midnight—above a seething chaos of foam. Where the silhouette of our house should have been, no more than fifty yards down the slope, there was only an uneven line of darkness, stark against the white of the sea.

Numb with dread as much as cold, I turned to face the climb. Pain shot through an ankle; my foot, I realised, must be trapped in the mud. As I tried to free it, the moon was blotted out, and I was plunged once more into absolute darkness.

No, not absolute. A star—a bright yellow star—shone out above me. And no, not a star but a lantern, swaying as it descended, and voices calling our names.

Though I escaped with only a severe head cold and a lingering chill in my bones, my aunt was stricken with fever. She lay delirious for several days, hovering between life and death, and by the time the fever broke, her lungs had been gravely weakened. We had been taken to the vicarage, where we remained in adjoining rooms, tended by Amy and Mrs. Briggs, whom Mr. Allardyce had kindly allowed to join us.