Naomi's Room

by Jonathan Aycliffe

  Laura was positively radiant, a new person, a resurrectee. She was so with Carol and Jessica, at least – her manner with me, her husband, was more reserved. I felt she resented my having gone out after her return, as though I had snubbed her, when in fact all I had been doing was to make her safe by tracking Liddley down. She looked at me during the meal, casting odd, sidelong glances in my direction as though I was a stranger and she was having second thoughts about having invited me into her home.

  Jessica was wearing a pink dress identical to one Naomi had owned: I remembered that Carol had bought them both matching outfits during her visit before Christmas. I considered it thoughtless of Carol to have let her daughter sit at my table wearing clothes that were so redolent with memory. At moments my eyes blurred and I thought I could see Naomi in Jessica’s place. They were cousins after all, they were so alike.

  I made a hasty meal and left them to it, to the slowly melting candles and their charmless chatter. A lawyer and an art historian rabbiting on about babies. They seemed to look oddly at me as I left the room, as I though I had said or done something untoward. But I ignored them. I was eager for my prize.

  I went to the study and opened my briefcase. There it was on the desk at last, the key I had been seeking all this time. It was a rare excitement I felt then, during those first minutes with the good doctor’s memories. But as I read, excitement gave way to apprehension, then to pity, and, finally, to horror. I understood John Liddley as I have never understood anyone.

  When I finished reading, it was late. I had heard Carol and Laura go to bed an hour or two earlier. The house was very still. I became aware for the first time that the study was cold. I sat without moving in my chair, hunched over the desk, my eyes on the cover of the diary. It had told me all I wanted to know. I knew why he had killed them, how he had done it. I even thought I knew what had happened in Spitalfields.

  I did not question what I had to do. Taking the diary in my hands, I stood and went quietly to the lounge. Laura and Carol had left a low fire burning in the fireplace. It was almost dead. I poked it and added some logs, and in a few minutes it had started to blaze again.

  Once it was truly alight, I took the diary and tore out its pages. They took easily to the flames, burning fiercely before crumpling to black ashes. When I had finished, I went outside and threw the leather binding into the dustbin. I smelled the night air, shivering, then went inside.

  Laura was asleep, her breathing audible from the moment I entered the darkened room. I undressed and got into bed beside her. Her back was turned to me, and I felt immeasurably relieved that I would not have to talk to her, lie to her. I lay awake in the darkness, no longer imagining, but knowing, what had happened in this house. Here, in this room, and above in the attic.

  The beginning of it all was Liddley’s attachment to his daughters’ governess, Miss Sarfatti. Her first name was Anna. She was a woman of obscure origins, and not even Liddley had been able to extract from her more than the minimum of information regarding herself. She was not of English parentage, though she had been brought up in this country. Even her nationality is unclear: Sarfatti is not an Italian surname, and I have been unable to discover its true provenance.

  Judging from Liddley’s description, Anna Sarfatti was a very beautiful woman. ‘I cannot describe my pleasure on first seeing her,’ he wrote in his diary – the words have remained with me – ‘It was as though I had passed through a door and entered a room quite different to the one in which I had been, a room whose dimensions, whose light, whose colours were wholly unlike those of any in which I had ever been or hoped to enter. I am entranced. Her eyes entrance me, her ears, her lips, her neck, the way she pauses in the midst of speech when seeking the right word. She is hesitant, demure, yet forthright and honest. I love her, yet to say so falls far short of what I know and what I feel. She will reveal to me all those things that have thus far been veiled from my eyes.’

  The doctor’s infatuation grew rapidly to obsession. His wife must have known of it: I fail to see how she could not, and Liddley himself suspected as much. On one occasion, Sarah did try to have the governess dismissed, but her husband overruled her and Anna stayed. At first, Liddley kept his distance, admiring, lovesick, but loyal to the wife he had married without affection. Gradually, however, his need for Anna became too powerful to resist. His correspondents were telling him that it was proper to scorn the petty morality of the masses, his instincts were urging him to bed the beautiful woman whom he met and talked with every day. And she, it seems, was not unwilling.

  He writes of the first time he slept with her: ‘I have risen to the dizziest heights to which a man may rise and yet remain alive. If I die tonight, I shall not care.’ Their assignations were carefully planned to coincide with Sarah’s absence, on visits to her parents or friends. Or else Liddley would concoct visits to fictitious patients and meet Anna at a room he rented in town. Things went on like this for over a year. Then Anna confessed that she was pregnant.

  Somehow, Sarah got wind of it. The lovers had scarcely been discreet, seem almost to have courted discovery. Anna’s position was impossible: unmarried, friendless, without living relatives, without resources, she threw herself on Sarah Liddley’s mercy. The scorned wife had none to give. This time, John was given no choice: if he did not dismiss the woman at once, he would lose wife, children, reputation, and career. It is hard to know which of these weighed most heavily in the balance with him. Certainly, his diary makes it clear that he loved his daughters passionately.

  Reluctantly, tearfully, he summoned Anna to his study, pressed money into her hand, and kissed her farewell. She set out disconsolately for London, clutching a small valise with her miserably few possessions and a piece of paper bearing the names of people known to her lover, people who, he said, would give her help. That was in July 1846.

  The diary is silent about what happened over the next few months. There are no entries. Nor have any letters survived in which the events of that period are recorded or alluded to. The diary resumes at the end of September with an angry, frightened entry in which Liddley records that he has contracted syphilis. His perplexity is evident from the near-incoherence of the entries for the next week or so. He knows he cannot have contracted the infection from his wife. But he finds it even harder to accept the unpalatable truth, that he has been infected by Anna, that demure, almost saint-like creature whom he so adores and for whom he has risked so much.

  There is a marked deterioration in Liddley’s mental state over the next months, recorded in detail in the pages of his diary. His anguish at losing Anna, his bitterness and confusion over her apparent faithlessness, his hatred for his wife, and his growing coolness towards his children, all combine to shake his reason. In the correspondence of this period, one or two examples of which have survived, he exceeds all previous bounds in his determination to rise above the commonplace, to find in the flouting of moral rules a pathway to truth.

  At this point, however, a fatal twist enters his philosophizing. It seems that he had in some sense begun to think of Anna as a focus, a lens through which he could see the shape of the cosmos more clearly. Once, he quotes from the spurious Rosicrucian pamphlet of the early seventeenth century, the Fama Fraternitatis: mundum minutum omnibus motibus magno illi respondentem fabricasset – ‘he fabricated a microcosm that corresponded in all motions to the macrocosm’. Anna had been John Liddley’s microcosm. He had imagined that, in her and through her, he would attain to the wisdom that had so far eluded him, that the power of love would accomplish what the strength of mind and will had not.

  Now, seeing the spring of his inspiration polluted and himself corrupted bodily and mentally, he began to conceive of knowledge and wisdom themselves as things of evil. Vice, he writes, not love, is the power that drives the universe. Cruelty, not mercy, is the bond between men. The purpose of medicine, he realizes, is not to heal but to destroy.

  Such feelings were compounded in early January of the follow
ing year when, to his horror, Anna Sarfatti arrived on his doorstep, cold, hungry, almost dead, and very near her time. Sarah would not allow her entry to the house. Against her protests, against his own feelings of revulsion, Liddley took his mistress to an outhouse of some kind, where he tended her through a long and painful labour, only to lose her in the end.

  She gave birth to a child, a boy who was, at Sarah’s insistence, taken to a local home for foundlings. Liddley named him John, after himself. He was later adopted, on Liddley’s recommendation, by a childless couple who were friends of his parents, people called De la Mere. They lived near the Liddleys – the Petitoeils – in Spitalfields.

  By then, however, John Liddley’s mind had given way completely. Outwardly, he retained his reason, but inside he was a turmoil of anger and misery. He could not bear to look at Sarah or his little girls. He ate alone, slept alone, communicated with his wife by notes left in the hall. A brooding silence descended over the house. Most of the time, Liddley kept to his study, feverishly reading and writing. Late at night, he could be heard pacing up and down in his bedroom or walking in the attic. Some nights he would saddle his horse and ride off, not returning until late the next morning or even the following day. These details are contained in a deposition made by his father-in-law after Sarah’s disappearance, based on statements by his daughter.

  And then something seems to have happened to make Liddley decide on the experiment that was to end in the final tragedy. ‘They have been given to me,’ he writes in a diary entry dated 14 April 1847, ‘as tokens of a higher grace, that I may find in them what no man has found in any woman before.’ By ‘they’, he meant his wife and daughters. He took the girls first and chained them in the attic, then he attacked Sarah, breaking both her legs, and left her with them, unable to move. They were left naked and treated as animals. They were, in fact, his specimens, what we would now call his guinea-pigs.

  I have no stomach to describe what went on over the succeeding months. There was no anaesthetic in those days, no analgesic to ease the constant pain all three suffered. Liddley was assiduous in his attentions. He sought for meaning beneath their flesh and bones. He believed that they might learn to overcome their suffering, but ‘they would not be taught’, so he punished them. The diary describes his experiments in graphic detail. Sarah died first, then Caroline, and finally Victoria. He wrapped their remains in burlap, bricked up the side of the attic in which he had held them, and never set foot in it again. But that was not the end. In a sense, that was only the beginning.

  I could not sleep. The bedclothes weighed on me, pinning me to the bed. When I closed my eyes, I could see images of Liddley, his pain-filled eyes staring at me, his lips half-parted in what was neither a smile nor a frown. But if I opened them, the bedroom seemed full of grey, lifeless shapes. Sleep would not come, nothing but thoughts of John Liddley and his family. How I pitied him. And how he frightened me.

  At last I turned on my side and reached out for Laura, looking for some sort of warmth or comfort in my sleeplessness. I threw one arm round her, pulling myself close to her, curving my body round hers. She was wearing a long nightdress. That surprised me, since she normally slept without clothes, unless it was unusually cold. I pressed in closer, putting a hand on one breast, causing her to stir and murmur in her sleep. And at that moment, my blood went cold.

  The woman I was holding was not Laura. Laura had short, closely-cropped hair. This woman had long, thick hair to her waist. Laura had small breasts, this woman’s were large. For a moment, I thought I had made a stupid mistake, that I had climbed into bed beside Carol. But in the same instant the woman beside me turned and reached out her hand for mine.

  ‘John?’ she murmured sleepily. ‘Is that you? Where have you been?’

  The voice was not Laura’s, not Carol’s. With a sense of growing horror, I pulled myself away from her.

  ‘What’s wrong, John? Do you not want me?’

  I reached out for the bedside light and switched it on. When I looked round, the bed was empty.

  23

  I must have screamed or cried out. Moments later, the door opened and Laura ran in, followed by Carol.

  ‘Are you all right, Charles? What on earth happened?’ Laura stood half-naked in the doorway, her eyes scanning the room, coming to rest on my face. She made no move towards me. Carol stood just behind her, pulling an old dressing-gown round her shoulders. They both looked tired and rumpled.

  ‘I thought . . .’ I stammered, ‘I thought someone . . . in the bed . . .’ I was unable to make sense, unable to force the truth out through my lips. I thought they would betray me, trick me into indiscretions.

  ‘You thought there was someone in the bed? What a silly,’ Laura said. ‘It must have been a bad dream. You’ve been reading too much. And you’ve been upset. That man in London being killed, it’s brought things back. I’ll stay with you now, you’ll be all right.’

  ‘Laura’s right, Charles,’ Carol added. ‘You’ve been working too hard. It’s too soon for work, you’re only putting yourself under strain. You need to rest. Look how much good it’s done Laura.’

  Such voices of reason, and only moments before . . . I nodded. In the cold electric light, my fears seemed grotesque. Laura came towards the bed. As she did so, I glanced round. On the pillow beside me, Laura’s pillow, a deep indentation marked the spot where a head had been. I reached out my hand. The sheets beside me had not yet lost their warmth.

  Laura got into bed beside me. Carol had already closed the door and gone back to her room.

  ‘She’s right,’ said Laura. ‘You have been working too hard. What does it matter who lived here all those years ago, what they did or didn’t do? They’re dead now, all of them. Can’t we forget them? Can’t we let them rest in peace?’

  ‘He killed them,’ I said. ‘His wife and two little girls. He operated on them without anaesthetics, he kept a record of their reactions in his diary.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, Charles,’ Laura insisted. ‘It’s all over now: let them rest.’

  I said nothing more. She did not understand, would not be made to understand that it was not all over. Before long, she fell asleep. I kept a small light burning, for I could not bear the darkness. It was almost dawn when I fell into a light, uneasy sleep. Twice before that, I heard the sound of feet in the attic.

  The next morning, just after ten o’clock, I had an unexpected visitor. It was Inspector Allison, the policeman in charge of the investigation into Lewis’s murder. The weather had improved again, and I took him into the garden. Carol and Laura were in town with Jessica.

  ‘We’ve checked right through the area for a Liddley,’ he said. ‘There’s no one of that name in Spitalfields or any of the adjoining districts. Very few Liddleys in London at all, in fact. So, suppose you tell me what it’s all about.’

  I hesitated. We were sitting on spindly little garden chairs Laura had bought the year before in a sale at Eaden Lilley’s.

  ‘Inspector, I have to apologize. I made a mistake. It was just a hunch, a guess. But I’m afraid I was mistaken.’

  ‘Let me be the judge of that. What made you give me the name in the first place?’

  I knew he would never believe what I would have to tell him.

  ‘I don’t want to mislead you, Inspector. Believe me, I want to find this man. He killed my daughter.’

  ‘You think the same man killed your daughter and Dafydd Lewis?’

  I nodded.

  ‘He killed Inspector Ruthven as well. But I was mistaken: his name isn’t Liddley. It . . .’ Now I was treading on difficult ground. What if I was wrong again? Would Allison haul me in for obstructing the police in an investigation, for wasting their time? Would my meddling lead to his death as it had led to Ruthven’s and Lewis’s?

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘I may be wrong again. But I think you should have another try. Not under Liddley this time. Under De la Mere.’

  During lunch, I noticed that somethi
ng was troubling Carol. I asked her what was wrong, but she fended off my inquiries, casually at first, then quite forcefully. Later, however, when Jessica had been put to bed for a nap, she suggested we take a walk. Laura offered to stay behind with Jessica, saying she wanted to go over some slides: she was going back to her old job at the Fitzwilliam the following Monday.

  So we went out, Carol and I, and cycled to King’s. We left our bicycles on the Parade and walked down to the Backs. A carpet of yellow daffodils and pale narcissi stretched almost to the river’s edge, broken by tiny clumps of purple and white crocuses. I mention all that, the poetry of the scene, merely because it contrasted so starkly with the dark solemnity of our conversation. I have taken no pleasure in flowers since.

  We walked, brother and sister, side by side along the river, struggling to rediscover the closeness, the directness we had once known as children and teenagers. Adulthood strips so much away from us, so many capacities, so many weaknesses.

  ‘What’s going on, Charles? I can’t get much out of Laura, and I don’t want to press her. She’s fragile, and I don’t know how much weight I can put on this improvement. At least she seems to be making some sort of headway. It’s you I’m worried about. Not your health, that’s not how it’s taking you. But you seem a different person, Charles. Not just changed, but . . . no longer yourself.’

  ‘I’ll be all right. Naomi’s death . . .’

  She turned almost angrily.

  ‘Come on, Charles, you know it’s not that. Not just that. I don’t expect you to get over Naomi for . . . well, for years, maybe never. But something else is going on, isn’t it? What is it, Charles? Has she come back to you, is that it?’