The Ghost Writer (23 page)

Beatrice seemed especially interested in "The Drowned Man", at whose face she gazed intently for some time before asking Harry to explain how the strange metamorphosis between youth and age might have been achieved. While they were talking, Cordelia, who was standing a little way behind them, found herself glancing from Beatrice to the portrait—as Harry had done that first afternoon with her. It was not a likeness in the ordinary sense—Beatrice's face was narrower, her eyes differently shaped, her hair a smoky brown rather than copper-coloured—rather, something in the carriage of her head, an aura, an atmosphere. Cordelia felt as if a veil had been lifted, not from the portrait but from Beatrice, who was listening with her whole attention to what Harry was saying, intent, receptive, with no trace of her usual watchful self-awareness. But for the most part, she addressed her questions to Cordelia while Harry watched and listened, becoming visibly more perplexed as he saw how much of the family's history was new to Beatrice. As he said to Cordelia later, when she had finally got him away for a walk in Hurst Wood, if he had not known otherwise, he would have sworn that she and her sister were the best of friends.

That evening, Beatrice (who usually preferred them to take turns at the cooking) offered to help Cordelia prepare the meal, and did so with perfect amiability. But then she came down in a striking dark blue gown which Cordelia had not seen before. Perhaps she was simply obeying her uncle's instruction to be on her best behaviour—but it seemed to Cordelia that Harry's eyes were straying rather too often in her sister's direction, and she lay awake most of the night, alternately fearing the worst and hating herself for giving way to jealousy and suspicion. On Sunday morning during another walk in the wood (Harry insisted that exercise was good for his injured leg, and refused to coddle it), she fought down the impulse to tell him just how uncharacteristically Beatrice was behaving, observing instead, "My sister is very beautiful, don't you think?"

"Indeed she is," he replied, "almost as beautiful as you", and with that he kissed her—or perhaps she had kissed him, she was not quite certain, afterwards—in a way that left her in no doubt as to his feelings for her.

A casual observer would have concluded, as the week went by, that Beatrice was reverting to her usual manner. The hoped-for reconciliation did not eventuate; each day she seemed a little more withdrawn, but it was a different sort of retreat: preoccupied, abstracted, self-forgetful. It was as if the wall between them had finally collapsed, only to reveal that there was no one on the other side. Her demeanour throughout Harry's next visit was so much more constrained that he asked Cordelia several times if he had done anything to offend Beatrice. Cordelia could only assure him he had not; her intuition of the cause was not something she wished to confide to anybody, least of all him.

B
EATRICE REMAINED, SO FAR AS
C
ORDELIA COULD TELL,
in this melancholy frame of mind for the next few weeks, as summer approached and Harry's weekend visits became a settled thing. Then, early in June, Beatrice went up to London to spend a few days with her friend Claudia in Bayswater. On the evening of her return to Ashbourn, she announced to her uncle and Cordelia (Aunt Una had already retired to bed) that she wanted to learn type-writing, with a view to earning her living in London.

"Miss Harringay's academy in Marylebone will take me, and Claudia's mother has said I am welcome to stay with them. I can go up to town on Monday morning and come back each Friday. I wish to earn my living, especially now that Cordelia will soon be married—"

"He hasn't asked me yet."

"I'm sure he will, very soon. And then you will need the money from the pictures—"

"No I shan't," said Cordelia sharply. "Uncle knows that the income will stay with him; he has cared for us all our lives, and I shouldn't dream of taking a penny of it."

Cordelia and her uncle had already spoken of this. He wanted her to take at least her share of the income when (as everyone now assumed) she and Harry were married, but she had declined absolutely. The securities in which the trust's capital was invested had declined in value, reducing the income to less than four hundred a year, only just enough to maintain her uncle and aunt at Ashbourn with the extra help they would need if she and Beatrice were to leave. She loved Ashbourn, and did not want to see it sold, any more than her uncle did. Of course now that Beatrice would be leaving ... it came to her suddenly that her ideal would be to live here with Harry, and that when, as must eventually happen, Ashbourn descended to her and Beatrice, she might be able to use the income to buy out Beatrice's share of the house. But then Harry was very much attached to London, and if, as she hoped, he were to give up the law, and seek a position in one of the galleries or auction houses, it would be even less practical for him to leave.

"Beatrice was just saying, my dear, that it will cost three guineas a week, all in all, for her to attend this academy; and that the training will last about twelve weeks. So the question is, whether you approve?"

"If you mean about the money, uncle, it is for you to say; speaking for myself, of course I approve."

"We can just afford it," said Theodore, "but we shall have to make some economies."

"Then let us make them," said Cordelia. It struck her as she spoke that Beatrice would be only a mile or two from Harry throughout the week, while she would be very much tied to Ashbourn by the need to look after her aunt. But it was too late to call back the words, and besides, it was only for three months; though of course, if Beatrice were then to find work in town, could she really leave her aunt and uncle to manage alone? Cordelia tried her best to appear enthusiastic for the rest of the evening, but these depressing speculations followed her up to bed.

C
ORDELIA HAD ALWAYS IMAGINED A PROPOSAL OF MAR
riage as a sort of magical transformation: one minute, perhaps, you were still wondering whether he really did care for you; the next (provided you adored him) you were the happiest woman on earth. By the time Beatrice announced her intention of leaving home, Harry was talking as if their future together was already a settled thing; of what "we" might do with the pictures in "our" house in London, for example; or how wonderful it would be if Henry St Clair should reappear and become "our" friend; and so forth. He would say these things quite unselfconsciously, but despite constant encouragement he had not come to the point of proposing, and she had not liked to ask him directly.

Oddly enough, it was Harry's continuing fascination—she was beginning to think of it as an obsession—with "The Drowned Man" that brought about their betrothal. Whenever they were in the studio, and he was not actively engaged in conversation, or studying one of the other pictures, he would begin to drift towards the lectern, there to sink once more into half-mesmerised contemplation, swaying slowly back and forth. She was reminded of the way in which she used to lose herself in her grandmothers portrait; but to lose yourself in the face of a corpse, locked in its final agony, with bloodshot eyeballs straining from their sockets, and weed and water flowing in and out of its gaping mouth ... It was all the more troubling because, when she ventured to distract him, she would sometimes detect a flash of irritation, even hostility, before his features resumed their normal cheerful cast. Away from the studio, he would agree that his fixation might be unhealthy, but she could tell that he did not like to speak of it. The face reminded him of something, he would repeat, something he felt sure would help him in his search for Henry St Clair, if only he could draw it to the surface. But many hours of concentration seemed to have brought him no nearer to understanding what that something might be. She had asked him twice if he thought it might be a despairing self-portrait, painted after he had lost Imogen. Possibly, he replied, but that was not what drew him to it. Nor, thus far, had his inquiries around the galleries, or his researches in Somerset House, Chancery Lane, the Reading Room of the British Museum, and other repositories of records and documents, yielded the slightest trace of Henry St Clair's existence.

On the Saturday after Beatrice's announcement, Cordelia and Harry were once more in the studio, at his instigation. He wanted to look again at one of the waterscapes (as she liked to call them) to see if he could establish where it had been painted. To Cordelia this was no more than a pleasant game of speculation; without benefit of tide it was plainly impossible to identify any location, even on the remote chance that the place was one you had visited yourself. But she agreed readily enough, hoping she could lure him away for a walk in the wood before "The Drowned Man" could ensnare him. It was a perfect summer afternoon outside, and there was a particular spot she had in mind; a grassy bank beside a stream where they had lain side by side and he had fallen asleep, so that by insinuating herself closer she was able to embrace him while he slept. And then when he had woken he had kissed her for quite some time before saying that perhaps they ought to think about getting back. Although she loved him for being so protective of her virtue, she would happily have stayed there for ever; it was like receiving the keys to paradise, and then being told you could only go there for a few hours every week.

The room diagonally below that in which Henry St Clair's pictures were stored had been "Harry's room" from the first; his things were scattered around it, and throughout the summer his khaki greatcoat had remained on the hook behind the door. Theodore's bedroom was at the other end of the same first-floor corridor (one of the intervening rooms being that in which Grandmama's things were still gathering dust, undisturbed). The two girls slept on the next floor up; Cordelia next to her favourite sitting-room, and Beatrice about half-way along the corridor. To reach Harry's room undetected, Cordelia had only to tiptoe past her sisters bedroom, along the landing and down the staircase, carefully avoiding the treads that creaked. Several times now, always while he was away during the week, she had stolen into his room at night, wrapped herself in his khaki greatcoat and curled up on his bed, wishing she had the nerve to do so when he was actually there. Really there was nothing to prevent her (Uncle Theodore was a heavy sleeper) except the fear that Harry would be shocked, and think her "fast". And why should he not? A well-brought-up girl was not supposed to creep into a young man's bedroom in the middle of the night, however passionate her longing to see, and touch, and above all embrace him: the most startling thing about these newly discovered desires was her inability to feel ashamed of them.

T
HE PICTURE
H
ARRY WANTED TO STUDY HUNG IMMEDI
ately to the left of the doorway: the rippling waterway, bearing a few small boats in the foreground, a dim green promontory in the distance, the great sweep of the sky overhead. He had said several times that he was sure he had been somewhere exactly like this; but today's scrutiny brought him no closer to deciding where.

"Shall we go now?" Cordelia asked. "It's much too beautiful to stay indoors."

"Yes, of course," he replied, moving towards the lectern, "I'll just..."

"Please don't. Wouldn't you rather be...?" She broke off, not wanting to sound imploring.

"Yes, of course," he repeated. But his feet carried him another pace closer.

"What
is
it that draws you?"

"I must..." His voice sounded muffled, as if by a strong wind.

"No, you must
not. Please look at me.
"

He turned, reluctantly, to face her. Again she had the eerie impression that he did not recognise her. "Like a man defeated by his craving for drink"—that was what de Vere's valet had said. She was suddenly afraid of him, and then very angry.

"I think you care more for that hideous face than you do for me. It is enslaving you, and you know it, and yet you ... you would rather look at a corpse..."

Tears choked her, and she ran from the room and down the stairs. But then to her relief she heard footsteps echoing across the floorboards, followed by the irregular rhythm of Harry's tread as he too began to descend. She did not look back, however, but continued on down, praying she would not meet anyone, especially Beatrice, out through the kitchen door and around into the lane, out of sight of the house. There she waited until he caught up with her, gasping out apologies and assurances of devotion, and took her in his arms.

"I am so sorry," he said a little later. "You're quite right; it's bad for me; we'll put it away in the other room and I shan't look at it ever again."

"I'm sorry too, I didn't mean it. Only, I wish you would tell me—what do you see? what do you feel?—that compels you so?"

"I can't ... it goes, like a dream, when you wake in the night and you're sure you'll never forget, and then in the morning it's gone ... all you can remember is that you meant to remember, and can't."

Cordelia suspected that he was withholding something, but from there they progressed to the grassy bank beside the stream, where they lay down and embraced as she had hoped, and where, a little later, he asked her to marry him, and the drowned man was quite forgotten.

O
N A STIFLING, OVERCAST EVENING TOWARDS THE END
of summer, Cordelia was once again watching from her old place in the upstairs window, waiting for Harry to appear at the turning of the lane. A scrawled note in yesterdays post had told her he would be arriving late on Friday, some time between five and seven-thirty, depending on when he could get away from the office.

The day had been exceedingly hot, the sun too fierce to venture out in; it had been a relief, at first, when the clouds came over. But still the heat pressed down like a blanket. The air was heavy with the perfume of the climbing roses on the porch below, mingled with that of a dozen different flowers, scents of foliage and bark and leaf-mould, warm stone and woodwork and paint still soft from the heat of the sun. She turned once more to look at the clock on the mantelpiece. Eight minutes past six.