Pale as the Dead

by Fiona Mountain

  Natasha felt Adam’s eyes on her again. But she knew that they could ask no more just now. Couldn’t tell this man, who had no way of contacting his daughter, that she might not have gone travelling at all, that she might never come home.

  ‘When she does come back, I expect you’d like me to let you know?’ Wilding said to Adam. ‘I can’t promise that she’ll agree to see you, mind. She has her mother’s stubbornness, that’s for sure.’

  Natasha realized then that she might never know the end of this. There was one crucial thing she had to follow up with Jake Romilly. But in the usual run of things she’d done her part, would collect her fee and never see Adam or Andrew Wilding again. If Bethany had simply gone travelling like Wilding said, there was no reason for Natasha to ever know if she came home, or if her father kept his promise and got in touch with Adam, and if Bethany agreed to see him. She could ask Adam to drop her a line maybe, but with what had passed between them, that didn’t seem a good idea.

  ‘Mr Wilding, I can tell you that some of Bethany’s ancestors did reach old age. It’d be no trouble to order up copies of the certificates so you can show them to Bethany.’

  ‘Could you? That would be tremendously kind.’

  Someone who needed no convincing that knowing about the past could really affect the present. ‘This may seem a strange request. Bethany’s grandmother, the one who left her the diary, did she leave anything else?’

  ‘Junk mostly. All in the loft. May died ten years ago now, but I’ve never got around to sorting it all out.’

  ‘Would you mind very much if I had a quick look?’

  Forty-Three

  ANDREW WILDING SHOWED her upstairs, took a long pole from an airing cupboard to hook open a latch in the ceiling, and dragged down an aluminium stepladder. ‘The light switch is on the floor, right hand side.’ He stayed to make sure she’d found it. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  The loft was a long boarded space beneath new, exposed rafters and wads of insulating rock wool. It looked as if the Wildings had considered converting it at some point, had got around to putting in a small skylight, cobweb encrusted now.

  There was hardly any foot-room between piles of cardboard boxes, suitcases, plastic carrier bags and bin liners of clothes and blankets. Christmas decorations, two wooden trunks, a small painted chest of drawers. The top drawer was half open, displaying jewellery; heavy brooches and garnet necklaces. There was an old record player, a stack of LP’s, shoe boxes of birthday cards, postcards, letters.

  Remains of a life. Several lives.

  In one corner was a stack of photograph albums. Natasha picked one up, cradled it in the crook of her arm and opened it. Black and white photographs secured with black corner mounts and white writing under each one, Brighton, Falmouth. The pictures were of a blonde woman in a woollen twin set and slacks, with short, curled hair, holding a baby straddling a breakwater. Then a little girl with an ice cream cone and a broderie anglaise sun hat, perched on a donkey.

  In the album beneath, the little girl was older, in another she was wearing a school uniform, white socks and a smart tie. In the bottom album she was a young woman. ‘Elaine’s 18th birthday’ the caption said.

  Kneeling on the floor, Natasha opened the first of the trunks. It was stuffed with clothes, evening dresses with sequins, a beautiful black stole, gold strappy shoes, a 1920s diamanté-studded tiara. She tried not to be distracted.

  A box at the bottom was crammed with more postcards. Pictures of Loch Lomond, Tintagel. They were postmarked 1987, 1989, a later one from the Loire Valley. All addressed to Granny, signed Andrew and Bethany.

  Natasha opened the other, larger, trunk.

  It was packed tidily with children’s toys and drawings, wooden building blocks, an ark with tiny pairs of lions and swans and flamingos, the paint chipped, a knitted rainbow scarf, with holes where stitches had been dropped, handmade dolls’ dresses, neatly sewed, a recorder a tennis racket and pair of rusted ice skates, a cloth doll and one in a crinoline. Jigsaw puzzles of a water wheel, King Arthur and Guinevere.

  Lizzie Siddal in Millais’ Ophelia.

  And beneath the toys, paintings. A toddler’s daubs and pencil scribbles, dozens of them. They were all neatly dated on the back, 1950s. Elaine’s then. Then the more sophisticated ones, touched by a maturing, individual eye. A treasure chest of memories. May had kept every single thing her daughter had ever painted, ever made or ever written.

  Natasha closed the lid and, turned her attention to one of the bulging suitcases, where she discovered that May had kept all her daughter’s clothes too.

  Did all mothers do that? Ann certainly didn’t. Selected items yes. But every single scrap?

  It was almost as if, deep inside, May had somehow known what was going to happen, had known that she would not have her daughter for long, would suffer what every mother must dread most of all, to outlive her child. She had known that every tiny piece was precious and must be carefully stored away.

  But there was nothing of Jeanette or Eleanor here.

  Natasha threw the ladder back into the void, looked round for the pole to close the hatch. Then she noticed a door with an oblong ceramic sign on it, decorated with pink flowers. ‘Bethany’s Room’.

  She opened it, and saw a single pine bed with a lilac and white quilt, and on the wall Pre-Raphaelite posters, slightly faded, of Ophelia and Arthur Hughes’ April Love, with coordinating purple flowers. There were collections of shells, a row of pearly nail varnishes, framed swimming certificates and a photograph of Bethany in what looked like a school play, wearing an ermine cloak and a crown. It could have been Natasha’s bedroom at her parents’ house.

  * * *

  Adam looked relieved to see her, as if conversation with Andrew Wilding had been stiff going.

  ‘Find anything?’ Andrew Wilding asked.

  ‘I’m not really sure what I was looking for.’

  ‘I just thought of something that might interest you, actually.’ He went over to a bureau in the corner of the room and opened a little drawer. He handed her a heavy silver locket on a chain, engraved with flowers.

  It was antique, Victorian.

  Natasha slipped her nail into the tiny clasp to open it. No photographs inside. Just a lock of red-gold hair coiled into the right hand side, the strands tied together with a thin strip of black silk ribbon.

  ‘Elaine said May told her it belonged to her great-great – I forget how many greats – grandmother. The diarist perhaps?’

  Natasha tried to remember if Jeanette had ever mentioned the colour of her hair, didn’t think so. She touched the coil very lightly, felt a sense of completeness, connecting to the past. A girl had sat in front of a mirror, in candlelight, brushing those curls until they shone, before she went to sleep. She had wound them into a bonnet on Sundays, plaited and decorated them to go to the opera, to meet Mr Brown. Then she had been ill, and someone close to her would have stroked those same tresses which splayed out on the pillow. She had died, and that same someone, the girl’s sister perhaps, little Eleanor, had taken a pair of scissors and gently, with tears in her eyes, cut a few strands away from the girl’s head, twisted them carefully around her own finger and slipped them into the necklace.

  Reluctantly, Natasha handed the locket back. ‘Thank you for letting me see it.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Andrew Wilding kissed her as she said goodbye. He stood at the windows to see them off, a forlorn figure framed by lace curtains.

  * * *

  ‘I can’t ever thank you enough,’ Adam said when they were on their way back to Stratford. He sounded distant and formal, like a chief executive thanking a faceless junior member of staff about whom he’d received a glowing report.

  Natasha kept her eyes fixed firmly on the road. ‘I wish I could have found her properly for you.’

  ‘You’ve done more than that. If what you said about the heart condition is true, you’ve probably saved her life
.’

  She swallowed hard. ‘Listen, Adam, there’s something…’

  He didn’t hear. ‘What you said…’ – he wiped the window with the back of his hand, pointlessly, since the dirt was on the outside – ‘… About taking chances at certain times of your life because of your ancestors.’ Natasha didn’t think he’d been listening to that conversation she’d had with Bethany outside the inn at Little Barrington. ‘The note Bethany left … do you think it has anything to do with what happened to her mother? That Bethany might have wanted to…?’

  ‘No.’

  They were at the station already. She felt churned up inside. Hadn’t said anything about Christine. Better that way. She’d do what had to be done on her own. There was nothing Adam could do to help anyway. She didn’t need him interfering, trying to stop her, confronting Jake Romilly himself.

  She stopped the car. A phrase came into her head. Have a nice life. ‘I wish you all the luck in the world,’ she said. Her mouth felt stiff, and she couldn’t make it form a smile. ‘I hope the exhibition goes well.’

  The passenger door was open, Adam was leaning behind the seats to retrieve his magazines. Then he ducked back inside and kissed her on the lips, slipping his hand behind her head to hold her to him. She felt his tongue, just for a second. His fingers snagged in the tangle of her hair and she felt a sharp little pain against her skull as he pulled away. ‘Good luck to you, too,’ he said.

  She heard what she thought must be his train, and then the sound trailed off into the distance, into the past already.

  Forty-Four

  NATASHA SWITCHED HER mobile on as she drove. There was a message from Mary. ‘No news from this end. What have you been up to?’

  Natasha called her back, gave her a summarised update.

  ‘Poor kid.’ Mary’s voice had gone very quiet. At once Natasha regretted opening her mouth before her brain was engaged. A story about a mother who died and left her child is not the kind of thing Mary would want to hear right now. ‘So that’s that,’ Mary concluded.

  The job done, but not resolved. ‘Not quite. I’ve promised to send her father some details of Bethany’s ancestors.’ Refusing to let go?

  ‘I can get those for you.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you be resting?’

  Mary groaned. ‘You’re as bad as James and my Mum. She keeps ringing me up to check I’m not doing anything.’

  ‘It’s nice she’s worried about you.’

  ‘About the baby more like. She’s been waiting for me to produce a grandchild from the moment I was conceived. I can’t count the number of times she’s told me she’s saved my Christening gown.’

  It occurred to Natasha that Ann had never once dropped hints about weddings or grandchildren. Given her present circumstances, Natasha wasn’t sure if she was glad about that or not. ‘OK, if you’re certain you’re up to it, there is something you could do. All I need to know is what Bethany’s ancestors died of. I need death certificates for Elaine Wilding’s parents and grandparents at least.’

  ‘Consider it done.’

  ‘Order them on twenty-four hour delivery will you?’

  ‘Course.’

  Bethany liked travelling because it made the days seem longer, Adam had said. She refused to talk about the future. Didn’t have time for dreams. She got a kick out of Jake Romilly’s pursuit of her. Because she wanted to live life to the full, open herself up to as many experiences as possible. She used a false name so she’d be able to disappear when she wanted. Also because a different name let her become a different person, escape the curse of her family.

  I have a bad heart.

  She told Adam he mustn’t rely on her always being around. When she sensed him falling in love with her she disappeared from his life because she was afraid she might be like her mother and her sister, like Harry Leyburn. Even more afraid, perhaps, that she was like her father, and what she wrongly thought him capable of.

  She’d become fixated on Lizzie Siddal, a tragic heroine who’d killed herself.

  Her Mother died when she was swimming, and Bethany wanted to pose as Ophelia, who drowned.

  She’d started to see death not as a threat but as an answer, a way out.

  * * *

  Natasha drove to the studio. No sign of life, the architects’ office closed for the weekend. She should have thought of a way to find out from Adam where Jake was staying. She’d have to ask Christine first thing Monday morning.

  Home. Natasha put the key in the front door. It wouldn’t turn. She twisted it the other way. It locked. So was unlocked before. She tried to tell herself that was all for the good. If Jake Romilly had come back it would save her the bother of having to go looking for him.

  She pushed the door open. Boris didn’t come bounding out to see her. The hallway felt warm. There was the pungent smell of smoke, the crackle of flames. She flew into the living room.

  The only fire was one blazing in the hearth. Boris was stretched out contentedly in front of it, and Marcus was sitting in the armchair reading The Pre-Raphaelite Dream, as if he’d never been away.

  Natasha felt tears start in her eyes.

  He looked at her, closed the book. ‘Sorry for making myself at home, but it was freezing out there.’

  He stood and she went into his arms, stayed there as long as she could. She wiped the tears away, didn’t care if he noticed. She couldn’t begin to tell him how glad she was to see him.

  Delicious cooking smells were wafting from the kitchen. ‘Thought you might be hungry,’ he said looking into her eyes. ‘Nothing exciting I’m afraid. Just what I managed to rustle up from your rather bare cupboards.’

  Which wasn’t exactly true. It smelt like roast chicken and potatoes. Potatoes she had, but chicken definitely not. He must have bought it specially.

  He suggested they went for a walk while they waited for the meal to cook. There were perhaps a couple of hours of daylight left if they were lucky.

  They took the Alpine.

  * * *

  ‘Strange name, Fish Hill,’ Marcus said as they stood, catching their breath after the climb. ‘When there’s not a lake or a river or the sea in sight.’

  It was a strange place, strange and beautiful. And once, long ago, it must have been under the ocean. Natasha told him the name came from a fossil that had been found in a quarry close to the summit, abandoned now, nothing but a scar. She told him that the limestone beneath their feet was also encrusted with fossilised shells.

  She glanced at him now, fed him a line, knowing he’d appreciate it. ‘We’re eight hundred feet above sea level so I suppose it’s no wonder the fish…’

  He laughed. ‘… were petrified.’

  They fell silent, but she kept watching him out of the corner of her eye, wanting to know what he was thinking, but happy just to keep reassuring herself that he was there. Some of the items of clothes he was wearing she’d not seen before. Dark blue jeans, a chunky, chocolate pullover. A fawn suede jacket that had once hung in her wardrobe. She knew it would bend in the shape of his arms when he wasn’t wearing it. He took a long breath of the crisp air, his hands lightly clasped behind his back and his deep, dark eyes, like a captain of a galleon, scanning the views that she felt she knew better than she knew herself.

  Ancient fields and time-weathered dry stone walls that moulded into the landscape and looked as if they’d grown there. In the far distance, cut out against the darkening sky, the Malvern Hills and the Edge, with the road to Winchcombe running along it, rising from the valleys of the Severn and the Avon. Timeless, mysterious, steeped in pre-history. The Bronze Age barrows just a few miles south west of Snowshill, where they found the 3,000-year-old bones of a warrior; the massive earthworks of the Dobunni Celts at Bagendon; the fort on the top of Burhill; the vast earthwork at Belas Knap, like the back of a great whale. Close to where they stood now, the ancient roads, the White Way and Buckle Street, had once formed a crossroads high in the hills.

  ‘When you stand here,�
� Marcus said. ‘The past seems so close you could step back into it. Is that just an illusion, do you think?’

  She knew which past he was referring to, couldn’t bear to talk about that now.

  ‘I worked it out,’ she said. ‘My grandmother just about remembered Queen Victoria’s funeral. Her great-grandparents would have been born at the time of the French Revolution. Ninety generations and you’re back to when Jesus was born. When you look at it like that, time shrinks, doesn’t it?’

  Marcus turned to her, running his fingers through his dark fringe, wrestling with the gusty wind to keep it out of his eyes. ‘I’ve missed this.’

  As they walked on he slipped his hand into hers.

  This was the where she’d taken him on the first weekend he’d come to Snowshill. The past and the present and the future sliding over each other like tectonic plates shifting in the earth.

  Back then they’d brought a flask of coffee and had drunk it, passing the cup between them as they sat in the long grasses in the lee of a dry stone wall flowered with lichen. There was the plaintive sound of lapwings and the chatterings of starlings. Further down, two boys were flying multicoloured kites, one shaped like a bird of paradise and the other a spacecraft.

  ‘Do you want to have children?’ Marcus had said.

  ‘What, here, right now?’

  He’d smiled. ‘If you like.’ Then, ‘Seriously?’

  Despite the fact that it was only five days since she’d first met him, that it was only the second time they’d shared each other’s company, it had seemed a perfectly natural question to ask.