I think it all began in Venice.
No, I know it all began in Venice. With the mirror and the feeling I had in the evening beside the canal. Everything seems to have stemmed from there.
Can you ever forgive me?
It is ironic considering the way I felt back then, in the beginning . . . I remember quite distinctly my true delight in having discovered a mirror belonging to Henri II. I had felt pure and unfettered excitement at having retrieved such an object from obscurity and at the prospect of bringing it home to you. Somehow it felt appropriate to me that it should be your gift. I don’t know whether this was my attempt to redeem a thwarted gesture of the past or something else, misplaced and misconceived. Whatever, looking back, I can see that from the beginning my happiness was almost instantly polluted, replaced by unsettling feelings, destructive of my contentment.
I remember clearly that after I had brought the mirror down to the basement and we had admired it and looked into it I felt compulsion and excitement. Something stirred inside me, largely desire. I had thought that that was occasioned by my reunion with you, and that alone. But I know now that that was not the case. Alongside my felicity, I always felt twinges of unease; that there was something else that hovered alongside my ardent emotions, something that penetrated into the darkness inside me. And while I rationalised and discarded this uneasiness, something lurked in the back of my mind, a haunting seed of doubt. There was something that disturbed me when I looked into the mirror, what I saw, what I felt. And yet every time I tried to name it, to see it for what it might be, it seemed to shift into something else, something less potent, and my rationality overpowered my fear, transmuted it into neurosis, a thought not to be trusted.
As time went on, the excitement, if anything, intensified. But alongside it the other emotion was also growing, deeper, darker and more haunting than before. It became increasingly difficult to fight, to ignore, to displace with platitudes about overreaction. I felt it seeping into the dark crevices of my body and I wanted to scratch it out of me, to tear it from my insides. But I didn’t know how.
Sometimes now I feel almost overcome by a desire to tear at my skin, to do harm to myself, to rip this thing from me. I feel it ever reaching out to me in the darkness of my dreams, whispering in my ear, polluting my thoughts. And in truth when I feel it, when I hear it, I am very afraid.
I have tried to overcome this, to discard it once more as a fiction, generated from some obscure hysterical part of myself. But I know that it is not. I know it beyond a shadow of any doubt that I might have had.
For some reason, I felt a need to let you know my feelings. When you are not with me, I find myself alone in the darkness, quite alone but for the murmurings plaguing my senses. Can you hear them now?
It used to be that I dreamed of you at night, of the smell of your hair, the touch of your skin, the beauty of your eyes and face. Now my dreams are gone and only nightmares plague me. One in particular is current. It begins very much like the scene I have described to you today. My son and I are in the drawing room of the Bloomsbury Square house. I am writing letters at my desk while he plays with his thaumatrope in front of the fire. I sit and watch him, see the twirling images mingling and separating before my eyes. And while I feel very much as if I am present in the room with him, in the peace of our home, I also know that I am not there. That really, truly, I am in the basement of the factory, in the shadows, quite alone, with the darkness whispering in my ears. A part of me is trapped here, and always will be, unable to escape. I feel almost beside myself in my loneliness.
I am more alone than I have ever been in my life.
36
‘YOU’RE BECOMING QUITE the detective, Johnny. First you find letters behind a photograph in the factory and now you find one behind the mirror in the underground room. What will you uncover next?’ Ophelia’s tone was teasing but I knew from the silence that followed that that wasn’t all she felt. Static crackled down the line intermittently.
‘Where exactly are you? The reception is terrible.’
‘Not surprising. I’m where people always do fashion shoots: in the middle of nowhere, in the wilderness, very cold, very remote.’
I nodded but didn’t say anything. The static detonated, a sudden burst in my ear, before settling down again. I shifted in my seat at the kitchen table, running my finger around the rim of my coffee mug. ‘So what do you think about them all?’
‘Well.’ She paused as she thought about it and I could hear the shouts and laughter of other people in the background at her end. ‘I know the ones from abroad aren’t precisely dated but I think the change in tone is pretty noticeable across the whole lot. He goes from intense and emotional in Italy, perhaps missing his mistress with just the right amount of ardour, to more effusive and neurotic in France, to eloquent but clearly delusional back in London. I think they were probably written in that order.’ Pause. ‘Do you think he was even in his house when he wrote the last letter?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said quietly. But I had thought exactly the same thing. Could he have actually been in the underground room, simply imagining that he was with his child in Bloomsbury Square? I shivered once more at the thought of it. But it was certainly possible. Especially given what else I had found. ‘There’s something else . . .’
‘What?’ Ophelia’s voice was terse above the background noise.
‘I found some other notes pushed into the lining at the back of the mirror.’
‘Really?’
‘Maybe ten or so. After the first letter fell I thought it was best to check what else was there. They’re just musings.’ I paused as I looked at the stack of scribblings scattered across the kitchen table – pages spattered with patches of green ink, littered with surreal doodles. ‘And none of them are dated. But I’m guessing they were written after this last letter. He seems to have completely lost touch with reality by the time these were penned.’
There was silence on the line. I could feel Ophelia’s hesitation. ‘Can you . . . can you give me an example?’
‘Sure.’ I picked one from the table. ‘A lot are just random words. Eyes. Darkness. Death. Hell. But this one is a little more coherent. If that could ever be the right word to use.’ I cleared my throat.
‘“I have heard you calling to me. In the darkness. You are coming for me. I know I can’t escape from here. From the darkness. From the demons and the dead that call out to me. I hear their voices, echoing. I see their faces reflected in the place where mine should be. They are coming for me, creeping out of the shadows, touching me, their dirty claws around my neck, dragging me down.
‘“Don’t leave me here. In the darkness.
‘“Alone.”’
I coughed slightly. ‘And there are lots of others in the same vein.’
‘I see.’ For a moment we both listened to the static crackle on the line. ‘I wonder if he wrote them all in the underground room, when he heard the darkness talking to him.’
‘That’s what I’m thinking.’
‘Jesus.’
I thought of James’s dead body on the factory floor. Was he driven mad by his delusions, haunted, literally tortured by his imaginings, doing harm to himself, dying of anxiety and fright? I shivered as I thought about it. ‘I think the note that was left on the mirror was written around the same time.’
‘Yes – it never seemed to make much sense, did it?’
I shook my head, thinking about its words. I have heard, but not believed, the spirits of the dead may walk again. I swallowed, but my mouth was dry.
‘Johnny, are you okay?’
‘Sure. I’m fine.’ Pause. ‘I just can’t wait to see you again. I’ve really, really missed you.’
‘Me too. It feels like for ever. And not just because I’m watching models tromp around a moor in the snow in stilettos.’
Thinking about that made me laugh. ‘God, I miss you,’ I said. Almost immediately I thought of James pounding the streets of Paris, pining for A
melia and professing his love for her in his letters. A sudden anxious feeling grew in my stomach and I wanted more than anything to get off the line. Perhaps if I denied what I felt I could deny a lot of other things too. ‘Well, I guess I’ll let you get back to work.’ The static hissed and spluttered over my awkwardness.
‘Okay. But I’ll see you tomorrow. Five-thirty in Shoreditch, right? The place I mentioned before.’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I remember.’
‘See you there, then.’ Pause. ‘Hey. Try not to think too much about all this, okay?’
‘I won’t,’ I said, conscious of the denial that my words were steeped in.
Ophelia said something else but I couldn’t catch it. The static bloomed, exploded and finally the line went dead.
I stared at the phone as I hung up, overcome by an inexplicable sense of desolation. Suddenly I felt very alone.
37
THE SOUND OF the telephone woke me. I opened my eyes but I had no idea what time it was. I lay in bed for a moment or two, listening to the insistent ringing. Then I got up and staggered towards the kitchen.
‘Hello.’ My voice was curt, still a little croaky from sleep. I coughed and looked at the clock on the wall. It was one forty-seven p.m. Jesus. Mid-afternoon. I had to try to start keeping more regular hours.
‘Ah, hello. Johnny, is that you?’
The voice was unexpected and I struggled for a moment to identify it. ‘It is. Is that Mr Alexander?’
‘Indeed, indeed. I hope I haven’t caught you at a bad time?’ And then, before I could answer: ‘I have some rather interesting information about your mirror.’
The animation in his voice made me feel queasy and I sat down. On the kitchen table in front of me were scattered pages – the ramblings of James and the picture of him and Amelia. I looked at it all and realised I was a little fearful. Mr Alexander could tell me almost anything and I would believe him.
‘The information came to me through one of my old acquaintances,’ he began.
I nodded into the receiver. I remembered what he’d said. But I hadn’t ever expected that anything would come of it.
‘It turns out that a friend of mine in the business has come across your mirror before.’
My heart did a silent somersault in my chest.
‘Indirectly, of course, given that it’s probably been down in that cellar for over a hundred years.’
I nodded again but said nothing.
‘Johnny, are you there?’
‘I’m here, Mr Alexander.’ But my voice was quiet and unwilling. It felt as if it was being dragged out of me. ‘Just surprised by your news, that’s all.’
‘Well, yes, it is rather surprising. I was speaking to Nathaniel Raven, that’s his name, on another matter just today. Nat has an antiques business in the City. Leadenhall Market. When we had concluded our business I thought I’d mention your mirror. Just on the off chance, you know. But when I told him about the initials of the mirror maker on the left-hand side of the glass and the lettering opposite it rang a bell for him. Especially when I remarked upon the darkness of the silver. He knew that he had come across something to do with this mirror before.’
Mr Alexander paused and I waited silently for him to get to the point. I felt my hand tense its grip around the receiver and beads of sweat begin to form on my upper lip.
‘As it happens, he deals largely in antique prints and photographs so I couldn’t understand how he would have come across a piece like yours. But here’s the thing. In his line of business he does often come across letters, notes and suchlike, alongside the images or prints – particularly if they are recovered straight from houses after the death of a family member. By complete chance, some letters that came into his possession, dated sometime in 1762, had made reference to this mirror. A strange coincidence, don’t you think?’
‘Very.’ Although even as I said it I was aware that what Mr Alexander had just told me didn’t feel remarkable or odd at all. It felt like information that had always been destined to find me.
‘Nat no longer has the letters but he broadly recalled their contents. Largely because it was such an unusual tale. Shall I go on?’
‘Yes, please.’ The words came out of my mouth but if I was honest it was probably the last thing I wanted to hear. I felt my body tense.
‘The letters came from Louisiana,’ said the old man, his voice assuming the same wistful and yet authoritative quality that it had had on the day I’d visited him. ‘They were sent in mid-1762, I think. Nat couldn’t recall when precisely, but he knew it was while the state still belonged to the French. It was ceded to the Spanish shortly afterwards, in a secret treaty made in September of that year.’
In spite of the way I was feeling, I smiled to myself. Somehow Mr Alexander always made me feel like I was in a history tutorial with him. How he knew all this stuff I had no idea.
‘The letters were sent by a Frenchwoman, the wife of a plantation owner, to her friend in Paris. They gave an account of some peculiar happenings on a neighbouring plantation in Southern Louisiana. The owner, a Frenchman, had moved out to America to attempt to make his fortune in tobacco. It was suggested that he was of some gentility, having shipped out a plethora of beautiful furniture, including armoires, dressers, chaises longues, lavish paintings, prints and – a particular favourite – an antique mirror, quite blackened with age and with engraved lettering on its surface. He was, apparently, singularly proud of this last item and extremely enamoured of the fact that it had once belonged to Henri II.’
He paused for a moment as if allowing this information to penetrate. ‘Anyway, this man’s wife, uninterested in living in a remote colony of France, stayed at home. And, perhaps as a result of this, there were rumours before too long of an affair between the man and one of the slave women on his plantation. Apparently the French woman dedicated a number of pages to a thorough discussion of the inappropriateness of this behaviour. Most of the French out there at the time were devout Catholics, you see.’
Mr Alexander coughed delicately and then resumed his story. ‘Nat recalled particularly that one letter told of a peculiar event that took place on the Frenchman’s plantation in the summer of 1762. It had been a rainy night, the tail end of a hurricane making its way inland, accompanied by thunder and lightning and howling winds. The slaves on the plantation said later that they thought they had heard raised voices and loud noises coming from the house. But they couldn’t be sure and ultimately put it down to the clamour of the storm. However, the following day the Frenchman was found dead on the floor of his sitting room, beneath the mirror, his body marked in various places. The slave girl who had become his lover was nowhere to be found.
‘Rumours abounded for weeks. Black magic – conjuring – was prevalent in the American South and was suspected particularly when a man died in mysterious circumstances. And there were plentiful stories about the girl. Among which that she had bewitched him and stolen his soul, disappearing on the night of his death never to be seen again. A trail of her muddy footprints was apparently found circling the wooden floors of the house leading from the doorway to the body and back again.’
As I listened to Mr Alexander’s voice, my gaze flicked upwards to the Elmer Batters print on the wall above the kitchen table. I looked at the stockinged feet, the shoes hanging precariously from the toes. For some reason they made me think of Amelia.
‘Another tale had it that the girl had disappeared some time before his death and that he, driven mad by her abandonment, had killed himself. Others said that he was a dark and powerful magician and had sacrificed her long before his own demise. The stories abounded, each more fantastical than the last. But whatever the tale, all were united in one thing. Something ominous had happened in the house that night.’
Silence followed. I was sure that Mr Alexander was waiting for me to say something. But I had nothing to say.
‘Nat said that it was a scandal for quite some time. It appalled the letter wr
iter, in any event, that much is for sure. That’s no doubt why he remembered it.’
No doubt.
‘The letters also said that the Frenchman’s estate was packed up and shipped back to France. So the mirror probably ended up back in Paris sometime in 1762. But who knows where it had been before – or, indeed, where it went after?’
Well, I knew that by 1898 it had made its way to Venice. What I didn’t know was whether its journey had been accompanied by tales as bizarre as the one from Louisiana or as tragic as the one from Rome. An image flashed through my mind of the slave girl’s footprints of mud patterning the floor of the Frenchman’s plantation house. The next moment I thought of Ophelia and the story she had told me about her mother’s feet marking the sand. Delicate, transitory imprints formed before the tide washed them away. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. Could the story I had just heard in any way be true? Could any of the things that Mr Alexander had told me have actually happened? A month ago I’d have laughed and dismissed it out of hand. But now I was not so sure. It seemed believable enough, at least parts of it, given what I knew of James Brimley’s death. And what I now knew about the manner of his demise.
‘Johnny, are you still there?’ Mr Alexander’s voice contained a tinge of agitation. Not surprising. I couldn’t have sounded like myself throughout the whole of the call.
I forced my voice into breeziness. ‘Yes, I’m still here. Sorry. I was just thinking. I don’t suppose your friend happens to remember the name of the Frenchman or the woman writing the letters? So that we can try and verify the facts – if, indeed, they are facts.’
‘I’m afraid not. It was the first thing I asked him as well. I’ve told you everything he could recollect. And he can’t remember what happened to the letters, either. He had a quick look around for them but to no avail. I’m sad to say that the most likely outcome is that they ended up getting thrown out. It happens a lot in our line of business.’
The Medici Mirror Page 22
