Song of the Skylark

by Erica James

  ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘What have I done? And where am I?’ They seemed reasonable enough questions, but judging from the expression on his face and, come to think of it, on the faces of the other two people peering down at her, she had cause to wonder. As she did so, she stared back at the other two – a man and a woman, neither of whom she recognised. The man seemed absurdly small, no taller than a young child. But then she realised he wasn’t standing; he was seated in a chair. No, not a proper chair but one of those … ? She forced her brain to think of the word she was looking for. A chair with wheels and a wicker back. Invalids used them. Oh, what was it called? She cudgelled her brain to summon the word, but was distracted by the woman speaking.

  ‘You’re at Shillingbury Grange.’ The woman was softly spoken with a strained air about her. ‘You came to see us,’ she went on. ‘Yesterday.’

  ‘Did I? Why?’ Then a thought struck her. ‘Are you Marjorie?’

  The woman frowned. ‘No, I’m your grandmother. Lavinia Upwood.’

  ‘My grandmother,’ she repeated. Something about that rang a bell. She mulled it over. ‘If that’s the case, why don’t I know you?’

  ‘You’ve never met me before. This is your grandfather, Charles Upwood.’

  The man in the chair moved towards her. ‘Have you and I met before?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ he said gruffly, at the same time dabbing his mouth with a handkerchief. On closer inspection she could see that his face had a strange lopsidedness to it, as though one side was being dragged down by an invisible weight.

  The doctor spoke again. ‘You were involved in an accident on your way here yesterday.’ He then turned to speak to the woman called Lavinia. ‘Obviously the blow to her head has left her with amnesia. I’ve seen this before and usually the memory returns bit by bit. As far as I can see, she’s—’

  ‘Did you say yesterday?’

  The man returned his attention to her. ‘Yes. You’ve been drifting in and out of consciousness since you were brought here.’

  ‘Who brought me here?’

  The man in the chair spoke now. ‘You were found by a neighbour of ours.’

  ‘Was I alone?’

  ‘Can’t you remember anything of the accident?’ he asked, again dabbing one side of his mouth.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Then for your sake I hope it stays that way,’ he muttered.

  ‘You must be hungry,’ the woman who claimed to be her grandmother said. ‘Dr Rutherford, will it be all right for her to eat something?’

  ‘I don’t see why not. Unless it causes nausea. Keep it light, though, nothing too heavy.’

  ‘May I ask another question, please?’

  Three faces turned to look at her again.

  ‘Of course,’ the doctor said. ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘What’s my name? Who am I?’

  Whatever the answer was, she didn’t hear it, for her eyelids suddenly drooped and, as though her body was flooded with a powerful drug, she sank into a deep, deep oblivion.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  April 1939, Shillingbury Grange, Shillingbury

  While she flitted in and out of a restless sleep, she was conscious at times of not being alone, of somebody watching over her in the darkness. During one brief instance of wakefulness, she observed the woman who said she was her grandmother sitting in a chair beside the bed where she lay. On her lap was a book, but the woman was asleep, her head tilted back, her jaw slack, causing her mouth to open, from which emitted an occasional snore from the back of her throat.

  When finally she rose to the surface from the depths of a chaotically dream-filled sleep and roused herself into a sitting position, she experienced the first faint stirrings of recall and understanding.

  Her name was Clarissa.

  Clarissa Allerton.

  And she had been staying with somebody in London. Who was that somebody, though? And if she had been staying in London, where had she been before? Where was home?

  It was no longer dark and she was quite alone, the chair by the side of the bed empty. From somewhere beyond the room she could hear noises. Voices. A dog barking. A door slamming. Through the gap in the heavy chintz curtains a shaft of sunlight reached across the rug on the floor and onto the pale green counterpane on the bed. Her gaze moved around the room, taking in the dark mahogany pieces of furniture – wardrobe, chest of drawers, dressing table, low stool, lamps. Everything had a worn and uncared for appearance. The more she looked at each item, the shabbier it revealed itself to be. The walls and ceiling were full of cracks and in places the wallpaper was coming away. Parts of the cornice were missing. This was not a wealthy household, she concluded. But once upon a time it must have been, for the proportions of the room befitted those of a sizeable house.

  As she watched the dust motes dancing in the beams of light against a backdrop of damask roses scrambling their tangled way up the curtains in a manner that mirrored the confusion of her thoughts, she tried to piece together how she came to be here. Like Hansel and Gretel she followed the scant crumbs available to her. There was a train journey involved, from … from a large and busy station and somebody was saying goodbye to her. A nice woman. Next there was man with a horse. The horse had a name. But as the horse’s name remained out of her reach, it was replaced by the image of a red sports car followed swiftly by a tractor. Something told her the tractor was important, but as she pursued its significance, she simultaneously recalled hearing a terrifying noise and her brain veered away from the image, like a horse refusing to jump a hedge.

  She still had no memory of how she had actually arrived here, and looking down at the nightdress she was wearing, she recognised the delicate embroidery and mother-of-pearl buttons. She remembered packing it, along with a change of dress and underclothes. She remembered too the anxiety she had felt as she packed her case, that the journey she was about to make was a leap into the unknown.

  That leap had taken her far deeper into the unknown than she could have possibly imagined. Although she didn’t feel the same anxiety now, for it had been replaced by a determination to solve the mystery of why she was here in this strange house with two complete strangers who claimed they were related to her.

  She was contemplating getting out of bed to go in search of a bathroom, when the door opened. It was the woman who’d sat by her in the night. A ghost of a smile lifted the tiredness from her face. ‘You’re awake,’ she said. ‘That’s good. How do you feel?’

  ‘Better. But I need the lavatory,’ Clarissa said, pushing back the bedclothes.

  ‘Let me help you.’

  ‘There’s no need, I can manage.’ But the second she put any weight on her feet and felt the room spin slightly, she realised she couldn’t manage alone.

  ‘Here,’ the woman said, ‘put your arm around my shoulder.’

  Fearing the woman wasn’t strong enough to take her weight – she looked too thin to bear more than a shadow – Clarissa did her best to accept the help, but sparingly. Once she was inside the bathroom and the door was shut and she had used the lavatory, she leaned tiredly against the basin to wash her hands. It was then that she saw herself in the mirror above the basin and gasped with shock. It wasn’t so much the sight of her heavily bandaged head that shocked her, as the bruising to her face. She looked awful. The skin around her eyes was swollen and blackened, and her right cheek was twice the size it should be and hideously bruised. Heaven only knew what was going on under the bandages. In her current weakened state she didn’t dare lift anything to find out.

  With the woman’s help she made it back to bed and sank gratefully into its welcoming softness. ‘I’m sorry to be such a bother to you,’ she said.

  ‘Please don’t feel you have to apologise. There’s really no need.’

  ‘But I’m putting you to all this trouble.’

  A
great sadness filled the woman’s face. A moment passed before she spoke. ‘You’re so very like her,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Like who?’

  ‘Your mother. It wasn’t until I set eyes on you that I realised the harm we’ve done, all that we’ve missed. All these years …’ Her voice caught and she looked away. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, when she’d composed herself. ‘I was so sure I wouldn’t feel anything. But I was wrong. Oh, so very wrong.’

  Confused by the woman’s words, but seeing how upset she was, Clarissa pointed to the chair by the side of the bed. ‘Please, will you sit with me and explain what you’ve just said, because none of it makes any sense to me.’

  The woman shook her head. ‘No, first you must have something to eat. You must be ravenous after all this time.’

  ‘Will you then talk to me? Maybe it will help more of my memory to come back. There are so many things that are all jumbled up inside my head.’

  ‘Very well, if you believe it will help. But I don’t want to exhaust you. Or upset you,’ she added in a voice so tremulous Clarissa was suddenly filled with a wave of compassion for her.

  An hour later, after she’d eaten a small bowl of soup and a slice of bread and butter, it wasn’t Clarissa who was upset, but this woman called Lavinia who, it seemed, really was her grandmother. Tears ran down the poor woman’s face as she spoke, all the while alternating between wringing her hands on her lap and wiping her eyes.

  ‘But how could you have done that?’ Clarissa asked, shocked at what she’d heard. How could this couple cut off their only daughter, and all because she’d fallen in love with a man not of their choosing? ‘What had my mother done to deserve such a punishment?’ she asked.

  ‘It was pride, pure and simple,’ Lavinia said, not quite meeting Clarissa’s eye, ‘I see that now. But at the time we believed it was the right course of action. Never did we think our beloved daughter would defy us, and when she did, we had no choice but to hold firm in the hope she would see the error of her ways.’

  Of course you had a choice, Clarissa wanted to argue, but she let it go, pondering on what she’d been told about this woman called Fran, who was her mother, a mother who had married an American. It was America where Clarissa had lived all her life, apart from some years spent in France. But like quicksilver, anything more detailed that came within a whisker of her grasp slipped away, and all she was left with was the disbelief that this story she’d just heard involved her – that these people had not only shunned their daughter, but her. Until now.

  ‘What made you want to see me after all these years?’ she asked.

  Lavinia nodded. ‘When I received word that you would be in London I knew then that I had to see you and make amends in some small way for what we did. I knew also that it might be my only chance to do so.’

  ‘Does your husband …’ Clarissa found it difficult to refer to the man as her grandfather ‘… share your feelings?’

  ‘Charles is not a well man. He had a stroke a number of years ago, which has left him greatly altered. Some days are better than others.’

  ‘You haven’t answered my question.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to appear evasive. What I was trying to say is that some days Charles feels enormous regret for what we did, and other days his stubborn old self dictates his mood and he’s compelled to justify it. I didn’t tell him I’d written to you, for the simple matter I didn’t know how he’d react. But seeing how badly hurt you were when you were brought here, I think the shock of it softened his heart. I know I have no right to ask this of you, but I hope you won’t think too badly of us. Not now.’

  Clarissa didn’t know how to respond. She needed time to think. She didn’t want to judge these people harshly, or condemn them, not when that was precisely what they had done to her mother. ‘I think I should like to sleep now,’ she said.

  ‘Of course. I’m sorry if I’ve tired you out. Is there anything else you need?’

  ‘No thank you.’

  ‘Dr Rutherford said he’d call in to check on your progress.’

  ‘Let’s hope he brings a magic potion with him that will restore my memory,’ Clarissa said lightly.

  Left alone, Clarissa didn’t sleep. She couldn’t. She was too agitated. She didn’t want to be stuck here in bed in a house she didn’t know. She wanted to be up, actively searching for all that she had lost. But eventually she slept and as she did so, a jumble of memories bubbled up from the depths of her consciousness – the colour of a summer frock her mother used to wear; an expression on her father’s face as he kissed her goodnight; a stern word from her Grandma Ethel; a pair of emerald eyes; a garden with lettuces growing; a house overlooking the ocean; a large and very beautiful ship; a dark and gloomy house, her mother working at a typewriter; a long train journey; a man in shirtsleeves with a peculiar accent; a sports car; a tractor; a narrow stone bridge and terrible agonised shrieks.

  She woke with a start, her heart pounding with the feeling that she had almost remembered what had happened. So near, yet so far, she thought. She had no idea if all those memories were in any sort of order, or whether it was merely a kaleidoscope of recollections thrown together at random.

  She tried to glean some encouragement from what she’d dreamt; she had to believe that with each new cataract of light that had been shone into the darkness, more memories would be illuminated as a consequence. She had to treat each newly learned piece of information as a stepping stone to the next. The challenge she faced was somehow to try and piece it all together into something that made sense. What she currently had was akin to a photograph album interspersed with blank pages.

  Her head began to ache, and so she leant back against the pillows and closed her eyes. Forcing the memories would not help, she told herself; better to let them form in their own good time, just as they had while she slept. But it was so frustrating not to be able to stand back and see the whole picture in one go. All she could manage was to see bits close up and in isolation, which didn’t help. For all that she knew her name was Clarissa and she was nineteen years of age, and that she had travelled across the Atlantic to this country, it didn’t help her know exactly who she was. She was as good as a stranger to herself. Worse than that, a lost stranger.

  She was drifting off to sleep again, when she heard the ring of a doorbell; a long, sonorous tone that brought forth slow, unhurried footsteps. Whatever words were exchanged, Clarissa couldn’t hear them, but minutes later there was a knock at her door and in came a young girl in a maid’s uniform.

  ‘Beggin’ your pardon, miss, but there be some people to see you. Shall oi show them up?’

  ‘Is it the doctor?’

  The young girl shook her head. ‘No, it not be ’im, miss.’

  ‘Where’s Lavinia, Mrs Upwood?’

  ‘She’s gone out. She’ll be back soon, and Mr Upwood is having his afternoon nap. There be no one else ’ere. So what about them visitors, do you wants to see ’em? They say they’re friends.’

  With such a hideously bruised and battered face Clarissa didn’t want to see anyone, but if there was a possibility these supposed friends might help her in some way, then she ought to see them. Besides, if they were kind enough to call, then it showed they cared.

  ‘Did they say who they are?’

  ‘Oi didn’t think to ask, miss. Shall oi go and find out for you?’

  ‘That’s all right,’ Clarissa said pessimistically, ‘I don’t expect I shall know who they are anyway.’

  Her prediction wasn’t entirely correct.

  ‘Forgive me,’ she said when her visitors were standing at the end of the bed and staring down at her, ‘I know you, but – but I don’t know why I know you. I’m told I have amnesia.’

  The woman came round to the side of the bed and sat on the edge of it, her face full of concern. She was very smartly dressed and on her head she
wore a hat the colour of amethyst, with a diamante pin pushed through at the front where there was a small dent. Something about the hat rang a bell. But only faintly.

  ‘I’m Polly. Polly Sinclair,’ the woman said, ‘your mother’s oldest friend. I’m actually your godmother. You were staying with me in London before this awful accident.’ She took hold of Clarissa’s hand and squeezed it gently. ‘I put you on the train. I wish now I hadn’t. This is all my fault. I shouldn’t have meddled by writing to your grandparents. I should have kept you safe with me in London.’

  ‘How did you know I’d been involved in an accident?’

  ‘Lavinia sent me a telegram. She thought I ought to know. I was on my way here when this charming fellow turned up on my doorstep enquiring after you.’

  Clarissa turned to look properly at the pale, slightly built man still standing at the end of the bed. He had thick black hair that was pushed back from a broad forehead, and behind horn-rimmed spectacles earnest dark brown eyes stared back at her. In the breast pocket of his jacket was a pen. ‘I know you,’ Clarissa murmured, ‘I really do, but—’ Suddenly it was all too much for her, the knowing, and the not knowing. What if she stayed like this forever, a prisoner of a mind that would never be the same again? She began to cry; great gulping sobs that caught in her throat. The woman called Polly put her arms around her and held her close.

  ‘There, there, you poor thing,’ she soothed, ‘what a terrible ordeal this must be for you. But you go ahead and cry all you want. Just let it all out. Don’t mind us for a single moment.’

  For what felt like forever, Clarissa did exactly that and when finally a calmness settled on her, she took the handkerchief the man offered her. She blew her nose and corralled her emotions. ‘Will you tell me your name, please?’ she said to him. ‘And how we know each other?’

  He sat in the chair next to the bed. ‘I’m Artie Bloomberg. We met on board the Belle Etoile.’