I trust you will forgive me any hasty remarks I may have made, with which you disagreed. I thank you again for your letter.
Affectionately,
Marguerite
Thirteen
The bulbs in the sour London earth of the Bedford Square flowerbeds were just coming into flower. The buds on the trees were breaking.
Flora and Justin sat alone on a bench in the square after lunch one day. Justin counted the fingers of Flora’s kid-gloved hand. ‘On this, I will put Scheherezade’s ruby, on this next one, Marie Antoinette’s diamond, and on this third, the simple band of gold, the wedding ring once worn by Wigdis the White-handed, my ancestress of eighteen generations past …’
Flora looked up at him. ‘I shall have a dog,’ she declared, with all the authority of a young woman in love, who is confident of her lover. ‘You may give me one, as a wedding present as well as the simple band of gold. I want nothing more – only you.’
The wedding would be in June. Her hand lay in his.
‘And what particular kind of dog would my lady like?’ he asked. ‘Big or small? Thin or fat? A little lapdog to sit in your lap when I am gone?’
‘You will never go,’ she said. ‘I will not let you. Or, if you go, I will go too.’
‘Not to war,’ he said, and smiled.
‘I shall come as close as I can to the battle,’ she told him. A carriage clopped round the square. He began to pull off her glove, slowly, finger by finger. ‘Like a little Viking bride.’ Her hand was bare now. ‘Put your hand to my face,’ he said urgently. ‘On my cheek.’ He picked up her hand and placed it there. He sighed. ‘Is it too rough, my face?’ he asked.
Flora gazed at him, her hand still on his cheek. Then she said, ‘Not as rough as my uncle’s.’ There was a pause.
‘You may take your hand away if you wish, Flora,’ he said. She did so.
‘You never knew your parents, I suppose?’ he asked.
‘Yes, I did. I was seven years old when they died, old enough to remember.’
‘What do you recall?’
She was uncomfortable. ‘It was hot. The birds were very noisy. Our nurse would throw water on the floor. We had – I had – a pony.’ She spoke as if the words were being dragged from her. ‘His name was Haig.’
‘But you do remember your parents,’ he insisted.
‘Yes, yes. I do,’ she said. ‘Of course I do.’ She now sounded a little breathless. ‘I will go in now,’ she said. ‘I feel a little cold.’
‘Of course, dearest,’ he said. ‘I will see you in. Then I must leave you. You remember we dine at eight with my parents?’
‘Yes, Justin,’ Flora said. He took her hand and they walked back to the house.
Beth Bennett greeted them in the hall. She told Flora, ‘Don’t forget. We have arranged to have lunch at Simpson’s with your uncle and Mr Reeve.’
Flora was in her bedroom. She had tidied her hair and was putting on her hat when she heard the bedroom door open.
Settling her hat, with a hatpin in one hand ready to skewer it into position at precisely the right angle, she called, ‘Margaret, did you get my gloves from the cleaners’?’
There was no reply. She leaned back, about to turn her head to look at the maid, when, in the Renaissance mirror, she suddenly saw behind her the young soldier she had found in her room on the night of the ball given by Lady Kilmoyne. She saw for the second time that same long, pale face, the brown eyes, light-brown hair with a cow’s lick falling a little over one eye.
She turned from the mirror, startled, her hand, with the hatpin in it, a little away from her. ‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘I don’t know you, do I? What are you doing here?’
He was standing by her heavily canopied bed. He gazed at her. His eyes seemed to her full of pain. Then he made a little, helpless gesture with his hands, turned and quickly left the room.
Flora, appalled, jumped to her feet and ran downstairs.
Fourteen
A plump woman in late middle age stood on the verge, a thick plaid shawl clutched about her, staring out over the rush-fringed lake. Her dark, greying hair was pinned up firmly. She had been drawn there to the lake that morning from the big empty house she inhabited and tended, a house no one had visited for thirteen years. This house had seen her change from a robust woman of twenty-five into a fifty-five-year-old with an ache in her bones. The house had drawn her in when it had been full of life. Now it was empty, yet still she dusted and polished, cleaned silver never used, washed china which would never be placed again on a table, rewashed, ironed, mended linen never put on any bed. She was still part of it, it was still her home, though the only sound in the empty rooms was that of brick and beam moving as time and weather dictated, though the furniture stood exactly where it had stood for so long. The woman continued to tend the ungrateful, unoccupied rooms and the objects within them. All stayed unchanged as she grew older.
That morning she had awoken with a feeling she had long forgotten, a sharp apprehension of what the day might bring. Something had impelled her across the muddied lawn, where spikes of new grass were beginning to shoot up, and down to the lake. The reeds sagged, brown beside the water. Opposite, beyond the lake, was a line of leafless trees, bare branches outstretched against the clear spring sky. Beyond the brown water of the lake, some five hundred yards away, the long lifeless grass quivered as if a wind ran over it, or as though someone were coming through it. But there was no one there. Then, by the lake’s edge, the reeds trembled. In the clear air by the lakeside, without any possibility of a mistake, the shapes of two figures materialised, a man and a woman.
‘Oh no, oh no,’ in the empty landscape the woman said aloud. But her tone was not that of someone facing a fresh horror. Rather that of someone deploring a thing long-dreaded. For months she had known those ghosts were being stirred up. There had been the letters from the sisters in Strand, the announcement of Flora Bennett’s engagement in The Times. For months she had felt the movements of air as they invisibly moved, heard their silent voices.
She faced her old companions across the lake. ‘So,’ she murmured. ‘You are hungry again. I must start feeding you once more.’
Fifteen
‘I don’t understand,’ said Geoffrey Bennett in bewilderment. ‘It’s absurd. What can Bradley – and the others – be thinking of? Heads will roll,’ he added, ‘mark my words. Heads will roll.’
Just before they left the house Flora had revealed that the young soldier had got into the house again. This caused much consternation.
The restaurant was dark-panelled. Waiters moved soft-footed among the white-clothed tables on which cutlery and glasses gleamed. There was a low hum of conversation. The Bennetts and their guest, Henry Reeve, were all eating beef – red slices lay on the men’s plates – with Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes, carrots and cabbage. The women’s meat was browner, more well-cooked.
‘I don’t understand it,’ Geoffrey’s wife said. ‘The servants never allow callers in without informing one of us – and yet twice now this young officer appears to have gained entry. Bradley swore he had admitted no one. Did you see which regiment he belonged to, Flora?’
Flora shook her head. ‘There was no indication—’
‘Well, never mind,’ Beth Bennett said.
‘He came through the back door,’ Geoffrey Bennett announced with gloomy certainty. ‘In all probability Bradley knew nothing of it. He must have been let in by one of the maids. But,’ he announced, ‘Henry will have heard enough of our unwanted guest. Shall we change the subject? Tell me what you are here for this time, Henry.’
‘It’s my usual theme,’ Henry Reeve said smiling. ‘I have recommenced digging at Shipston Down and come to consult again with my friend at the Museum, Sir Arthur Banks. And one day you must, all three, come to visit me and see the site for yourselves, when the weather is better. It is in a charming spot. Imagine the spread of turf, the sea below, a blue sky and, overhead, a lark will be singing. But,
’ he reflected, ‘I forgot – you, Miss Flora, will have far better things to do with your time when summer comes than walk round archaeological diggings with an old man.’
‘You are not old, Mr Reeve,’ Flora told him.
‘I feel it sometimes,’ he said. ‘But if I am not old, my ruins are – and you by summer will be looking to the future, not the past. But you will come, will you not?’ he asked Geoffrey and Beth.
‘We should love to,’ Beth told him. ‘After Flora’s wedding, of course.’
‘You will be freer when I am gone,’ Flora said.
‘But infinitely sadder,’ Geoffrey told her.
‘I shall be sorry to leave home,’ she told him.
‘Goodness, Flora,’ Beth said briskly, ‘how can you say that when you have so much to look forward to?’
‘It is natural, surely, to feel a little nostalgia for an old life when one is embarking on a new, however promising,’ Henry Reeve said, smiling at Flora. ‘I am sure you would be disconcerted, Beth, if Flora shook the dust of Bedford Square off her feet with too much alacrity, packed and ran, with never a backward glance, so to speak.’ He said to Flora, ‘But my dear, you eat nothing.’
‘I have, perhaps, a little headache,’ Flora said tentatively.
‘It really doesn’t help to find a soldier in your bedroom,’ Geoffrey said crossly.
Beth looked about her to see if anyone had overheard. ‘Geoffrey, keep your voice down,’ she reproved. ‘What kind of a house will people think we keep?’ She appealed to Henry Reeve, ‘Henry, you are a clever man. How on earth do you think he got in?’
‘I am not Sherlock Holmes or I would examine all the locks and windows. But I’m inclined to agree with Geoffrey – it may be a case of the back door and one of the maids. Perhaps he tipped her. The young man may – forgive me, Flora – be a besotted admirer.’
‘Should I perhaps inform Justin?’ Flora mused.
‘Do as you please, of course,’ her aunt said a little sharply, ‘but I would rather not give the Kilmoynes the impression we are careless.’ She asked, in a kinder tone, ‘What are your plans for the afternoon?’
‘I think I shall visit Father Rawley at St Amselm’s in the City. Then I shall buy the blue ribbon for Justin’s cousins, who will be attendants at the wedding. Then I shall have tea at Lady Kilmoyne’s,’ Flora replied.
‘May I come with you in search of the ribbon, Flora?’ Beth said. ‘We have had two false starts already, with Madame Eglantine, the tyrant who is creating the dresses,’ she explained to the men. ‘She rejects everything we bring. This time we must get it right.’
‘Yes, Aunt. Shall we go as soon as we have finished lunch? I will visit Mr Rawley later.’
And this was agreed. The ladies left; the men were left alone with the Stilton and treated themselves to a glass of port apiece.
There was a brief silence as the waiter put down the glasses.
‘I’m sorry our conversation has been so dully domestic,’ Geoffrey said.
Henry Reeve smiled. ‘What a business this wedding must be.’
His friend nodded. ‘Poor Beth’s days are filled …’ Geoffrey said.
‘Your bank balance empties …’
‘It makes me doubt the whole institution of marriage. Or at least, the way we begin it. Perhaps it’s a kind of a test, an ordeal for all concerned, whereby we all prove fitting. I wonder how your old villagers conducted their weddings.’
‘Simply in forests and groves, one would hope, for their sakes,’ Henry said. ‘Unable to write, they kept no records. You seem a little anxious, Geoffrey. It can’t just be ribbons and invitations. Is everything quite all right?’
‘I’m obliged to sell a piece of family property in Essex – for Flora,’ Geoffrey explained. ‘Naturally, I don’t want to send her to the Kilmoynes penniless, but there is a history to the place – it belonged to my brother. I don’t want to discuss this with Flora, though the house is partly hers, in case it arouses unhappy memories. Then, there’s an old housekeeper who will have to leave – but I apologise, Henry, this is none of your business.’
Henry, who had known Geoffrey so long, was surprised by his evident strength of feeling about the matter.
‘Is there no way out?’ he asked.
‘No way,’ declared Geoffrey. He exclaimed, ‘I wish to God I’d never set eyes on the place, that none of us had. I wish there were nowhere on earth called Bly.’ He sighed, ‘Flora is a charming, a wonderful girl.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ murmured Henry.
‘But look at her now – vague, dreamy. She doesn’t seem to know where she is. Did you know she spends hours at St Anselm’s with Jack Rawley every week?’
Henry shook his head. ‘No, Jack hasn’t mentioned it.’
‘Well, she does. Here is a girl engaged recently to a man she loves, spending half her time with the padre – I ask you, is that normal? You don’t need to answer. It’s written on your face. It all goes back to Bly,’ he said vehemently. ‘Back to Bly.’
‘Will you tell me what’s wrong?’ Henry asked.
Geoffrey looked at him very directly. ‘God knows,’ he said, ‘I need to tell someone, but it’s a ghastly story – and you have your appointment.’
‘It’s easily postponed.’
Geoffrey made his mind up. ‘Henry, will you come with me to my club? I’d value your advice.’
Henry Reeve stood up. ‘I’ll send a note from there to Banks, cancelling our meeting.’
Sixteen
The two men sat in a comfortable bay window at Geoffrey Bennett’s club, looking out over an unfrequented street, a cul-de-sac. To their right the view was of the Mall and St James’s Park under the bright, cold light of a day in early spring.
Geoffrey leaned forward. ‘The story of Bly,’ he said, ‘is a dreadful one, and one reflecting no credit on me. Through my own stupidity and selfishness, I caused a tragedy. Only Beth knows the full horror of it.’
‘You’re quite sure you wish to tell me?’ Henry asked.
‘Burden you, more like,’ said his friend. ‘Yes, I’ll tell you. I’d be grateful if you’ll listen. It begins fourteen years ago, when my brother and his wife died suddenly in India. At that time I was suffering bitterly from the loss of my first wife. Then came this second blow. I found myself in a black cloud, from which I could not escape. I was left in charge of my nephew and niece, a boy of nine, Miles, and a girl of seven, Flora, without any mental resources to deal with them. None. I decided, therefore, to put them with the reliable housekeeper at Bly and appoint a governess. The boy, in any case, was coming up to the age when he would go away to school. I appointed a young woman, with excellent references, to act as governess. All, I supposed, was well. Then the governess, Miss Jessell, left with little warning. The reasons for her going were obscure, the housekeeper could tell me nothing. And by now I was about to be married to Beth. Without any further thought, I appointed another governess, at the point when the boy was going off to school. I do not know what happened. At one moment all seemed well, then Miles was dismissed from school. Then,’ he said, Then – alas – he killed himself. A boy of ten – to kill himself …’ Geoffrey Bennett looked down, his face suddenly lined and grey.
‘That is terrible,’ Henry said. ‘And that was when you shut up the house and brought Flora back to live with you,’ Henry prompted.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But I never found out what happened at Bly. Whether the new governess was responsible in any way for what happened to Miles – the extent to which the housekeeper, Mrs Grose, was involved I do not know. I shall never know. Mrs Grose said later she felt her role was to pretend cooperation with the young woman, while keeping check on everything she was doing. But Mrs Grose, while a most superior woman, was, is, a servant, with a position to keep. Perhaps she told the truth; perhaps she was swept up in the strange, hysterical world some women, a few, are able to create about them. Was that what happened? Or was it the past, the death of both parents, which caused the bo
y to kill himself? I suspect something else – something … But, alas, the main reason is neglect. This is the story of a man who doomed a boy by inattention. Had I taken proper responsibility for the children, he would still be alive, of that I’m sure.’
‘That is something you cannot know,’ said Henry. ‘And so you brought Flora home?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I collected her from Bly after Miles’s death, a perfectly speechless child of eight. She heard, she obeyed when necessary, but she never spoke, not to express a preference, not even to tell us when she felt ill. When we spoke to her she was mute. Beth, I might add, was a saint. We had married only six months before. Doctor after doctor failed to help Flora until finally, whether by the action of time, or luckily hitting on the right man, after a year along came one who did encourage her to regain her speech. But not on the topic of what happened at Bly. When that subject arose, she became silent again, completely mute, as before. Naturally, we dared not risk setting her back. We ceased to speak of Bly to Flora or any subject connected with it. Since then it has been for her as if that place did not exist, nor the events connected with it.’
‘My God,’ Henry Reeve said. ‘This is a terrible story. But … does Flora not even mention her brother?’
Geoffrey shook his head, ‘Never.’
‘But does she remember him? Is the whole period a complete blank for her? Or does she remember but not speak of it?’
Geoffrey shook his head, ‘Henry,’ he said, ‘I do not know.’
There was a pause.
‘My dear fellow,’ Henry said. ‘I had no idea – none. I really don’t know what to say. I imagine your best course is to sell the property and say as little as possible about it to Flora. What else can you do? How much does her fiancé know of this story? And the Kilmoynes?’
Miles and Flora Page 6
