by Sophia Tobin
Something softened in his wife’s face as she looked at his puzzled expression. She pulled a small upholstered stool over and sat opposite him, in the pool of candlelight. She took his hands. And she began to speak. She spoke in a low voice, soothing, and all on one note, as though she were telling a story to one of their children. She said that her trunk was packed. She said that she was leaving Redlands, and that she planned never to return. She said that she was unhappy, that she had been unhappy for a long time, and that she wished to go.
‘I will go tonight,’ she said. ‘I thought about not telling you, but that seemed unfair.’
He could not speak; he only shook his head.
She agreed to sever any claim: to Redlands, to his fortune, to his children. To separate, and to disappear – as much as one could, in the modern world.
‘Send the maid away,’ he said. ‘I will not speak in front of her.’
But she put her hand out, and motioned for the girl to stay.
‘Why will you not speak to me alone?’ he said.
She stared at the closed box, which held the diamond. ‘Because I am a little afraid of you,’ she said.
‘Do not talk of leaving. It is a ridiculous thing. I will never agree to it.’
‘I have taken a lover,’ she said. And all at once, the world changed. He saw that she saw it, in his face.
‘So you see,’ she said. ‘You can divorce me. I know there will be a scandal. I know it will be expensive. But they will blame me. You can begin again.’
‘No.’
It was a comfort, to see the surprise on her delicate face. He stared at her gown. She was dressed in that purple shot silk, so different from the hard bright colours he loved. Why had he ever had her painted in black, with that strange look on her face? But in the end, she had just been a setting for a diamond. When it had been added to the portrait, it had shone out so brightly from the painting that it rivalled Charlotte’s face and eyes, claiming every viewer.
As he stared at the pale oval of his wife’s face, the thoughts raced through Ashton’s mind, chief among them the fact that he had already lost her, perhaps long ago. He stared at the subtle change of colours in the gown, and wondered when she had ordered it – wondered how, in degrees, he had lost her without even noticing it.
‘No divorce,’ he said. ‘How can you even suggest it? To have our names dragged into parliament? Our marriage mocked, and gossiped about?’
She let go of his hands, and rose to her feet, the layers of her gown sighing into place. ‘I will go,’ she said. ‘I will not come back. As long as my father and brothers live, they will not allow me to starve.’
‘You are mad.’ He tried to stand, and found his legs did not work. He fought to find words. She began to walk away.
‘You have always been a burden to me,’ he said, as she walked into the half-shadow, and took her bonnet from her maid.
She placed it on her head. Tied the ribbon below her chin. ‘And you to me,’ she said.
‘Charlotte,’ he said, as the door closed behind her. ‘Charlotte.’ He reached out to her, his hand grasping the darkness. He had never really known her, never understood her. But she was a burden he wanted.
He stayed, sitting at that desk. He did not raise the alarm. He toured the house that night, with his servant, as though nothing had happened. As though a trunk had not been packed into a hired carriage and set off at a pace into the night.
Alone in his room, he had vomited. Crawled onto his bed, where he lay without undressing. Where he spent the night shivering, as though in a fever. Shivering, and thinking.
At dawn, he rang for fresh water, and fresh clothes. He sent the house scrambling into action. A fire was lit in the salon bleu; he came down. It was best to face the scene of betrayal, he thought: face it now, and you never need worry about it again. He set to work with ink and paper. A letter to his lawyer was the first that was sealed and sent; the second was to Nicholas.
He would create his own truth. Let the gossips whisper. The image would be so complete that they would be silenced, sooner or later. In a day or so he would address the servants. But he must straighten the details in his mind first.
He opened his drawer, drew out his journal, straightened his writing implements, and dipped his pen.
Then he began to write.
The death of my wife, in August 1841, was most regrettable.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
1941
Dear Mrs Taylor, Livy,
I hope this letter reaches you. I did try to telephone but the line is down, and I am going away, with my wife, to Scotland.
I am writing because I discovered something, and I know you would want to know it. A small cache of love letters, from Charlotte to Henry Dale-Collingwood, had been kept with some other mementoes of her by her daughter, and passed down through the family.
Whether Charlotte asked for them back, or whether Dale-Collingwood sent them back of his own volition, I do not know.
They are passionate letters. They prove beyond doubt that the pair were lovers.
There were newspaper clippings telling of Charlotte’s death. That she suffered a swift decline and died here, at Redlands, and that there was no public funeral, but that she had been buried privately here. But, as I told you, there is no stone for her here, and no record of her burial.
The other things I can make no sense of. There is a carte de visite for a Miss Emily Granger – neither I nor my wife have ever heard of such a name; a paper fan, with a child’s drawings on; and a bracelet of blue stones – Stevie says they are lapis lazuli. They do not resolve the mystery. Nothing about a diamond. And – I almost forgot – a riddle, in Ashton’s handwriting, which I write down here, as I know you will wish to know it.
My love lies in a gilded cage
A jewel box built for her apart
The proof lies heavy on my chest
Turned on the tablet of my heart.
I am dreadful at riddles, being rather a straightforward man, and my wife says it seems Ashton was rather dreadful at them too. It is rather a horrible thing, do you not think? Of course, there is the idea of the jewel box. It does not matter now. My wife has decided that the diamond does not matter, and I follow her good sense in everything.
I write partly to recompense you – to tell of what I have found, because I know you will want to know – because I should never have so entangled you in it all. My wife has told me how wrong I have been, how it has all been a kind of madness. I write also to apologize to you, for any confusion or damage which I caused you. I should have said sorry a hundred times to you for all that happened.
I wish you much happiness in the future.
Yours,
Jonathan Whitewood.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
1884
On a cold night in February 1884, eight men gathered at a suburban graveyard. They had two lanterns between them, which was agreed to be a paltry amount of light.
‘Bit creepy, this.’
‘I’m not sure about it.’
‘Fuck off then, I’ll have your share.’
It was amazing what money could buy.
The roses on the grave had only just started to turn. There was no stone, nor was there expected to be, Miss Granger had said. She had given the location exactly. The fresh grave, on row seven, between the Elton grave and the Hunter grave.
Their lanterns on the ground, the men began to dig.
*
Ashton Kinsburg was not at the graveside. He waited in a carriage at the perimeter of the graveyard. He huddled into the leather seat, his eyes on the pinpoints of the light he could see from the window. He was in evening dress from a ball he had attended, his fur-trimmed cloak pulled up around his shoulders, his top hat on. Alone.
The carriage door was pulled roughly open. His steward, Watson, got in. ‘Shouldn’t be too long,’ he said. ‘The transport is already at the west gate.’
‘It is definitely her, isn’t it?’ said Ashton.
He had asked the same question six times that evening.
Watson sighed. He often thought he was paid well, but not well enough. ‘Yes, Mr Kinsburg,’ he said. You wretched old man, he added silently.
*
One of the digging party fled into the night, claiming that it was godless work. They all knew that already, so the rest continued, slightly gleeful at the thought of keeping his share. Still, they swore at each other extravagantly, the number of curses increasing the lower they got.
The coffin was not too far down. It was difficult to lift the thing out, but the men were strong, fearless and muddy, three of them scrambling down into the grave.
‘There’s one below.’
‘It’s the top one we want.’
Foi had been buried below, eleven years before.
Once it had been heaved out, six men raised the coffin onto their shoulders, and carried it – haphazardly, it had to be admitted, and with less dignity than it deserved – to the hearse carriage waiting at the west gate, its panels veiled.
One man stayed behind, to fill in the grave again.
*
It was past one when the hearse carriage, followed by another, pulled up at the back of the Mirrormakers’ Club. There was no one in residence apart from the housekeeper and porter, and Ashton had told them he would not return until late. As director, the ceremonial head of the Club, and still its main financier, he had lodgings at the top of the building. The building had been the centre of his life for over forty years.
As the coffin was unloaded in the narrow lane, beneath the windows of the Dining Hall, the double doors swung open and cast a dim square of light. Climbing down from the carriage, Ashton saw with relief the features of James Dale-Collingwood, the company surveyor. An adopted son, whom Henry had claimed to be a distant cousin, he nevertheless looked so similar to Henry that Ashton presumed him to be a by-blow. Sometimes Ashton caught the similarity with a sharpness that drew him up; even more so now that Henry was in the ground himself.
Tonight, James looked as though he would rather be anywhere else than here. He said nothing; having opened the doors, he stood aside, and let the coffin pass.
‘Thank you,’ said Ashton. He leaned on his stick. His breath was a little short.
‘You know the way,’ said James, without ceremony. ‘I have left the moat door open, and you may direct things. I have had the niche prepared. Once it is placed inside, come out, lock the door, and give me the key. I will arrange for it to be bricked up, as agreed. It is,’ he murmured sullenly, the scent of brandy on his breath, ‘most irregular.’
‘You have been paid well enough,’ said Ashton.
It had been his motto.
*
They achieved it. The coffin was placed. Ashton sent the men away, grumbling, through the dark tunnel. He directed Watson to go with them, to settle up, and to threaten them satisfactorily, so they would remain silent.
He stood with one lantern, staring at it. He had not so much as touched the coffin.
‘Goodbye, Charlotte,’ he said. But despite his expectations, the words sounded stilted, and false. He had expected so much: a surge of feeling, perhaps, a sense even of vengeance followed by peace. But he felt the same as he always had, as he had since that evening she had come silently into the salon bleu at Redlands, her maid beside her.
He had not really believed her. His plan to announce her death was a kind of reflex, a striking out, an immediate revenge. He did not believe she had gone for good. But she had, and only through agents and lawyers did he learn of her after that. She had not a single penny from him; he ached for the day when she would return and beg for his money, for his mercy. He was a disciplined man, but there were still days when he was possessed by it: when he spent hours locked in a one-sided conversation with his absent wife.
As the weeks passed, then months, he had done everything he could to convince the world she was dead. How far he had succeeded, he wasn’t sure, even now. He did not wish to marry again. But always, her empty room haunted him. He had missed her. The shadows between their profiles as they lay, face-to-face, in the bed. The vision of her, her dark hair spread over the pillow, the diamond lying just above her head. She had looked like an angel.
He had wanted to ask them to open the coffin, so that he could see the old woman she had become, but he knew they would refuse.
After a year or so, he had sent agents to look for her. They found her, living without her jewels and rich dresses, with one servant, in a suburban villa, under an assumed name. An annuity from her father kept her barely comfortable. He knew that much. Now and then, he employed an agent to check on her, to check that she was still at the same address. What he really wanted was proof of her unhappiness. But he had never sought it. Because he knew that if he found the opposite, he could not have borne it. Once, his agent had mentioned how a man had come to visit her: coyly, his face monitoring Ashton’s expression. Every week, the same man, carrying a gift; he had seen them through the window, their heads together, talking, laughing. But what the agent had seen in Ashton’s face had obviously frightened him, because he had never mentioned it again.
Once, at a dinner at the Mirrormakers’ Club, Ashton had sought out the painting which he had given to be hung there. Gone to its dark shadows to look at her face again, now only described as a ‘woman’, not even a ‘lady’. A beautiful face, for every man’s delectation. He could hear the banquet in full swing above him, the roar and babble of men eating and drinking. And he had thrown a full glass of white wine into her face.
But there she was still, poised in dry amusement, even as the rivulets of wine ran down her face. He had always disliked that expression. The black dress. The diamond she had never liked.
This building towered above him, already full of memories, and gathered whispers, whispers which strengthened in his mind. He felt sure people knew, and spoke of him, said things of him: this wealthy collector, who had made the Mirrormakers’ Club his life, after his wife’s death.
This place had meant everything to him. Looking at the carvings, at the coloured marble walls, at its grandeur, gave him a feeling close to happiness.
And yet Miss Granger, on her last visit, to tell him of Charlotte’s death – Charlotte had never known her last companion was a spy – had mentioned, in passing, in that over-refined, sing-song voice of hers:
‘She said the architect built it for her, you know. The Mirrormakers’ Club. Everything in it referred to her in some way.’
Of course, the wretched woman was not to know. She had cared for Charlotte only during her last six months. The words had spread like an ink blot in Ashton’s mind. Who was that man his agent had described; the weekly visits, the talking, the laughing?
It was Henry, he thought.
And Henry had a ward who looked like him. Who stood outside, even now, waiting to wall up this coffin. His voice, familiar in some terrible way. Could Charlotte have borne a child, in her exile? A child adopted by its natural father?
‘No,’ he said, to the cold and damp darkness. He stared at the coffin in its niche. He clutched the key in his hand. Ashton thought of his own son. Thomas had been a sad disappointment: spending money wildly, refusing to make a suitable marriage. How many times had Thomas asked him about that diamond, when Ashton knew all the boy really cared about was the money it was worth? His mouth set in a hard line when he thought about the steps he had taken to keep the gemstone safe from his children. He was determined that, even after he was gone, they would search for it in vain: in his papers they would find only gaps, riddles and misdirection.
For Ashton’s daughter was also a disappointment to him. Isabel was the same as her mother: disobedient, secretive, hiding things from him. Once, he had caught her, turning over an unfamiliar bead necklace in her hand, and as she turned, surprised, she looked so much like Charlotte he had wanted to strike her. He had never been able to erase Charlotte from her mind, even as he had instructed everyone not to speak of her, and dest
royed any trace of her in his papers. Isabel remembered, he knew. She knew it was her mother in the painting; she remembered the scent of her. She would hand the knowledge down: in whispers, in things said between sips of tea. The power women had, he knew, was in never forgetting.
He realized then that this great effort he had gone to had brought him no peace. That what he wanted was not Charlotte’s corpse in a box, buried where he wished. He wanted her to rise again. To stand before him in their rooms at Redlands. To wake from the last forty years, as though it had been a terrible dream.
*
Leaning against the wall, James Dale-Collingwood looked wretchedly at Watson. ‘He’s taking for ever,’ he said. ‘Can you not get him to move along?’ He drummed his fingertips against the wall. ‘It doesn’t sit well with me,’ he said. ‘My father died last year. If I had even an inkling that his body was moved, I would bring the sky down on that person’s head.’
‘He has the money,’ said Watson sharply. ‘He can do what he wants.’
‘Whatever you say,’ muttered Dale-Collingwood.
But he did take too long. So, at length, Watson opened the door, and dipped his head into the darkness of the moat for a moment, before he closed it again. ‘Oh, dear,’ he said.
‘What?’ said the surveyor.
‘I believe the old man’s crying.’
*
Above in the Club the picture hung, newly conserved and cleaned. She reached out to observers with her steady gaze, the outward expression of a mind unfettered and uncontained. Through time, she would continue to say it, again and again, with her eyes. As she had tried to say it to her husband, as he stood behind the painter, looking critically on. I was never yours. I belong only to me. Do you see, really see, me now?
EPILOGUE
1966
THE STAIR HALL, THE MIRRORMAKERS’ CLUB
It was so strange, coming back to The Mirrormakers’ Club.
They were late to the party – a reunion for old staff – and their lateness made Livy even more nervous. She and her husband lived in the country – once a land girl, always a land girl! as they said so cheerfully – and the clamour of the city felt foreign, long-forgotten. No longer was the building she looked for a lone survivor among bomb sites. She had told herself it would seem smaller, drained of its power in the modern city, with the Barbican estate rising just a few moments’ walk away. It would seem unfamiliar and strange to her.
