Beneath the Water

by Sarah Painter

  Then he kissed her, igniting all of Stella’s nerves at once so that she thought she was going to explode. His hand on the back of her head, knotting her hair and tugging gently, tipping her face down to his, and Stella couldn’t think when she had last been touched like this. With desire. With raw need.

  She put her hands on his chest, feeling the muscles there, and then ran her palms over the hardness of his shoulders and arms. If anyone had asked her, she would’ve said that gym-muscles did nothing for her, that she preferred the slim aesthetic of Ben, but she found her body didn’t seem to agree. Some primal part of her brain appeared to have woken up and was tingling at the thought of being crushed by this solid slab of human being. Pleasantly crushed. Deliciously crushed. Every part of his body pressing into hers.

  When his fingers found the edge of her silk top and began to lift it, reality came crashing back. She stopped kissing him and leaned back a little. ‘There’s something I should warn you about.’

  He smiled at her, looking happier and more relaxed than she’d ever seen him. It seemed a shame to spoil the mood, but Stella remembered the look of surprise on Ben’s face when they had first got naked and she had no desire to relive her past mistakes. ‘I have a big scar on my chest. It’s not that bad but I didn’t want you to be surprised.’

  Stella had trained herself not to say ‘a nasty surprise’. She knew she had nothing to be sorry for, that many people had far worse, that appearances weren’t the most important thing and that she was still attractive enough despite it. She had trained herself not to sound pitying and needy and pathetic. She had told herself it was a badge of survival, something to be proud of. She had told herself that so often that she believed it. She had told herself so often that she could barely recall the tone of disgust when a school friend had pointed out the worm on her body when she had been changing into gym clothes at primary school.

  He straightened up, looking fascinated. That was both pleasing and worrying. She didn’t want to be anyone’s fetish.

  ‘It’s right across my chest,’ Stella said, touching the material of her top. She traced the line from her sternum, down between her breasts. ‘They didn’t think I was going to survive, so aesthetics weren’t top priority.’

  She took his hand and put it on her side, where there was a deep pit. ‘And this is where they put a shunt in.’ She shivered as his fingers explored the dip and ridges, the puckered skin. It still had the strange nervy feeling and she stretched away.

  ‘Sorry,’ Jamie said, moving his hand. ‘Does it hurt?’

  She shook her head. ‘Just feels weird.’

  ‘Is this why you get out of breath?’

  ‘I’m not out of breath,’ Stella said. ‘You’re not that good a kisser.’

  He grinned and kissed her until she felt dizzy, until he had thoroughly vanquished her lie. His hand slid up under her top, skimming over her skin and the material of her bra. She wondered if it bothered him. He was obsessed with perfection. His last girlfriend was probably a model or an actress or a fitness instructor. A body builder.

  She pushed the thought out of her head. He was kissing her. Because I happen to be here, a treacherous voice supplied.

  ‘What?’ Jamie wasn’t kissing her anymore, he was peering up at her, a tiny frown between his brows.

  ‘Nothing.’ Stella forced a smile.

  ‘Do you want to stop?’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘No,’ he said quickly. He moved his hands away though, deliberately. ‘Are you having second thoughts?’

  ‘I always have second thoughts,’ Stella said. ‘About everything. This? This qualifies for third and fourth thoughts, too.’ Well, that was the mood well and truly broken. Stella extricated herself from his lap, suddenly embarrassed. ‘I’d better go.’

  He didn’t try to stop her. As Stella walked from the room, she could feel him watching her, the back of her neck prickling and her legs wobbly.

  She walked up the main staircase and to her bedroom, closing the door and leaning against it for a moment. What was she thinking? You didn’t get romantic with your colleagues and you never, ever got romantic with your boss. That was just common sense.

  The words were true, but the feeling underneath said something different. Jamie was different. This job was different.

  Christ. Stella closed her eyes. What if things went wrong between them and she had to leave? Her heart clutched at the thought of leaving Munro House. Did tonight already count as ‘gone wrong’, though? Perhaps if she just acted completely normal in the morning and they never, ever spoke of it. That could work.

  Stella changed into pyjamas. Her cutest cotton set with the camisole-style top in broderie anglaise. When she realised that she had her hand on the door handle and was about to go wandering the house in the hope of bumping into Jamie and picking up where they’d left off, she marched herself to the sink in the corner and brushed her teeth. Then she got into the cold bed and tried not to think.

  An hour later and the red wine buzz had drained away and Stella was wide-eyed and staring into the dark. She wondered whether Jamie was asleep. She had heard his footsteps on the stairs and had hoped that he would knock on her door. She had strained to hear his bedroom door open and shut, but it was too far down the corridor and he was too light on his feet. Surprisingly light for such a solidly built person. So many things were surprising about Jamie.

  She could picture him, lying in his bed, maybe curled on one side, the way he had slept when he was ill. Every part of her yearned to go and get into the bed beside him. She kept replaying the scene downstairs, the way his lips and hands had felt, the way they had fitted together. Why hadn’t he stopped her from leaving? Why hadn’t he knocked on her door? A cold thought crept out from the back of her mind. Maybe it was Ben all over again. She just wasn’t the kind of woman men lost their minds over.

  He’s just not that into you, Stella thought, disgusted with her own neediness, and turned over to try to sleep.

  Another twenty minutes crawled by, and then Stella sat up and switched on her bedside light. There was another reason Jamie might not have stopped her from leaving: he knew he was her boss and he didn’t want to put pressure on her. Stella tried to dismiss it with a cynical he’s been in America for ages, he’s probably paranoid I’ll sue him, trying to get her old distance back, but it didn’t work. Jamie was a good man, she could feel it in her bones.

  He’s a good man who might not want you. Kissing you probably did nothing for him. The small cruel voices were back, but Stella ignored them and threw back the covers. It was freezing out of bed and she pulled on a big woolly cardigan over her nightwear and went out into the hall. The light was on and she walked to the end, stopping outside Jamie’s bedroom and putting her hand on her chest to feel her heart pounding. She raised a hand to knock and the door opened. Jamie was wearing a T-shirt and joggers, as if he were about to go for a midnight run.

  ‘I thought I heard you,’ he said.

  ‘You were listening?’ Stella said, hoping that was true.

  He smiled, and opened the door wider. ‘Would you like to come in?’

  ‘Yes,’ Stella said. ‘Very much.’

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  28th October, 1848

  My dearest Mary,

  I write to you to ask that you visit. I do not know whether this letter will get to you as I am unable to leave the house at present and must rely upon our housemaid to deliver it to the post. I do not know whether she is naturally slapdash or whether she is acting upon another instruction. Regardless, I have not received word from you or faither and must assume that my letters are not being delivered. Or that I have been forsaken by you all. No. I shall not believe that. Not until the very last.

  Please please come to Queen Street. Just to see your face would be balm enough, I feel. My time is very close, now, and I waddle like a matron. It is a good thing that I still have a lady’s maid. I have no idea how the poor folk manage to dress themselves. Perhaps they s
leep in their day clothes?

  Although Mr Lockhart is very capable, he has urged me to seek advice from J. Y. Simpson. I could not believe it when he first broached the subject. Just to hear that man’s name spring from my husband’s lips was most shocking. He usually flies into a rage should anybody else use the name. He says that he believes the baby is lying in the wrong way for birth and that it wouldn’t be proper for him to administer to his own wife. This, you may remember, is after months of treatment both before I was with child and since. He had no compunctions then, nor every day when he takes a little sample of blood. Oh, how I hate that ritual. I know that I should not complain and that I am fortunate to be under such careful watch, but I cannot abide the needle.

  Mr Lockhart wrote the note for Mr Simpson, naturally, but I had to sign my name at the bottom. He said that Simpson cannot resist the plea from a lady in need and that is why he ended up in obstetrics. While many of the doctors sneer at that field, Mr Lockhart believes it is an area ripe for advancement. In that, he and Mr Simpson are in perfect agreement. Having heard so many stories over the last year, both in the parlour and from my maid, I cannot help but agree. Why must ladies suffer so much torment when bringing new life into the world? The minister says that it is God’s will and that our suffering is penance for Eve’s sins, but I say that my God is too kind to punish us all so harshly. I do not say it out loud, you need not fear.

  I believe that J.Y.S. will attend to me at home, if he concedes to assist in my confinement. I wish it were not so. I would dearly love to leave this house, even if for such a terrifying purpose. The walls oppress and the days grow longer and longer. I have stitched a layette and am working on a sampler but my fingers shake and I cannot make as neat stitches as I used to. I grow afraid, too. Not of the birth, although I cannot say I am anticipating it with pleasure, but of motherhood. How will I care for an infant, guide and teach a child, while I am so weak?

  Jessie

  The next morning, Stella opened her eyes to discover that she was not in her own bed in her house with the duck-egg-and-silver wallpaper she had spent three weeks choosing, but she wasn’t in the blue bedroom in Munro House, either. She was in Jamie’s bedroom. In his bed. And, yes, if she turned her head to one side, there was the man himself. His eyes closed and breathing deep and even. She watched him for a moment, memorising his features and wondering how things could have changed so completely between them in one night. Of course, Stella thought as she rolled onto her back and stretched, it had been quite a night. She had probably had less than two hours’ sleep, but she felt fantastic.

  ‘Good morning.’ Jamie’s eyes were open now.

  ‘Good morning,’ Stella said, happiness rushing through her body.

  Jamie propped himself up on one elbow, looking down with a sleepy smile that was just for her. ‘How are you?’

  Stella thought for a moment, determined to be honest in this new relationship. Then she said: ‘Excellent.’

  After leaving Jamie so that she could shower and have a carbohydrate-heavy breakfast, Stella went down to the office to do some online shopping for books and clothes; the essentials.

  Jamie appeared almost as soon as she had switched on the computer. ‘I was thinking about tackling the attic properly this morning. You game?’

  ‘Sure,’ Stella said. ‘Is there anything in particular you’re hoping to find?’

  ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘It’s just an excuse to get you into a dark enclosed space.’

  ‘Well you don’t need a ruse for that,’ Stella said, smiling. He caught her for a kiss and then went in search of a head torch. Once he had them both kitted out, he opened a door which Stella had assumed hid a cupboard but actually revealed a very narrow set of wooden stairs.

  The torches turned out not to be necessary, as the attic was well lit and roomier than Stella had expected. In fact, the attic was a series of interconnected rooms, matching the grand proportions of the house below. You could stand easily in the middle of the floored space; in a smaller house, it would have been instantly converted into a spare room. Of course, the Munros had no need of extra space. She could see the tension in Jamie’s shoulders as he looked around, and she thought about asking him if he really wanted to go poking about. Ancient history was one thing, but he might find out stuff about his parents or grandparents he would prefer not to know.

  ‘When did you last come up here?’ she said instead, knowing that Jamie was focused on answers and that, no matter what had happened between them, it was his house. His history.

  ‘Never,’ he said. ‘Off-limits when I was a kid. And I was very obedient.’ His mouth twisted a little and Stella’s heart ached for him. She had looked at the photographs of Jamie’s father and heard the stories and none of it made her feel sad that the man was no longer in residence.

  The attic smelled clean and dry, with just the faintest edge of rotting cardboard from the packing boxes. There was a lot of paper and cardboard – packaging for household items going back to the forties, and Stella began moving it from on top of every box, crate and piece of furniture, and stacking it in a pile. ‘Granddad was very thrifty,’ Jamie said, smiling, joining in with the task. ‘If a kettle or something broke, he wanted to be able to return it so he kept all the original packaging.’

  ‘How long did he live here with you?’

  ‘Until he died. I was six,’ Jamie said.

  Stella levered off the lid of a wooden crate using a flathead screwdriver. It was full of unopened seed packets. She picked one up at random. A pretty watercolour of a pea plant on the front and the price ‘1d’ on the back. ‘I don’t think your grandfather threw anything away,’ she said.

  ‘Look.’ Jamie held up a microscope, his face lit up. ‘I wonder if this was his. Or Dad’s.’

  ‘Older, I think. Could be your great-grandfather’s.’ She was about to add ‘or grandmother’s’ out of an automatic loyalty to her gender, but she stopped. How likely was that when you were talking about the early nineteenth century? And she didn’t believe in whitewashing the past. You had to look it in the eye and, hopefully, learn from it. Otherwise, what was the point?

  ‘You ought to get that valued,’ Stella said. ‘For the insurance.’ She had been reading about the increased interest in old medical and scientific equipment. Jamie wasn’t the only person keen on the polymaths of the past. Sotheby’s had recently sold a cabinet full of glass eyes for twenty-five thousand, and an ebony-handled surgical saw had gone for six grand.

  There was a large mahogany sideboard pushed against the rafters. It was ornately carved and stunningly ugly. Now that she’d moved the packaging from around it, she began searching the drawers and cupboards systematically.

  ‘You’re really into this, aren’t you?’ Jamie said, and Stella straightened up, startled. He was closer than she expected, and she could have put out a hand and touched the middle of his chest.

  ‘I’d love to find something which relates to the papers,’ Stella said, meaning Jessie’s letters but not wanting to admit it out loud. She was obsessed. If anyone would understand obsession it would be Jamie, but he was so private about his family that she didn’t want to alarm him, either.

  ‘I love that you’re doing this with me,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if I’ve told you how much I appreciate it.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ Stella said. She wanted to say something flirty about him demonstrating his appreciation last night, but she suddenly felt too embarrassed. She couldn’t manage flirty. It just wasn’t in her nature.

  Jamie was staring and Stella wondered what he was thinking. It was the intense look he got when he was listening to a science podcast or trying to work something out.

  ‘Christ,’ he said, ‘I can’t stop thinking about you.’

  ‘Oh.’ Stella swallowed. She could feel her heart fluttering and, without meaning to, her hand found its familiar place on her chest, pressing, feeling.

  ‘Are you all right?’ In one step, his body was filling her vis
ion, his hands on her shoulder.

  ‘Fine,’ Stella said. ‘Just—’

  And then he kissed her and her heart beat hard and fast, but with a steady rhythm that made her feel like an athlete finishing a race, rather than a fish gasping for air on the deck of a ship. And then she wasn’t thinking about her heartbeat at all and she was just kissing Jamie, her mind and body alive.

  He broke the kiss long enough to look at the floor. ‘I don’t know if those floorboards will give you splinters.’

  ‘I could go on top,’ Stella said, laughing. ‘But we’re supposed to be researching, you know.’

  Jamie made a mock-offended face. ‘You’re supposed to be so overcome with lust that you forget everything else.’

  ‘How about we finish looking up here and then get overcome with lust when we’re downstairs near a bed.’

  ‘Practical as well as beautiful,’ Jamie said. ‘A winning combination.’ He kissed her again for good measure and then let her go.

  In the sideboard there were some boxes of vintage Meccano in pristine condition and several mismatched glasses and dishes. One of the drawers had linen napkins and another newspaper cuttings. Stella looked at a couple but they seemed to be random ‘funny’ stories and not the sort of thing she imagined the Munros collecting at all. The image of Jamie’s great-great-grandfather, gazing sternly from his portrait, flashed across her mind. Perhaps he was a riot after a glass of sherry? She took the pile out of the drawer and put it into a folder to go through.

  ‘Hello,’ Jamie said, his voice slightly muffled. He was buried deep in a pile of bulging canvas sacks with drawstring tops, the posh equivalent of storing stuff in bin liners. He shuffled backwards out from the pile dragging a leather bag. It was dark brown and a bit bigger than a modern duffel.